


Rat And Sword Go To War

by rthstewart



Series: The Stone Gryphon [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Gen, Narnia Big Bang 2012, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-03 21:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 57,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As D-Day and the assault upon Hitler's Fortress Europe loom, Peter dons the flying horse of the Airborne Division and Susan joins the spies of the Special Operations Executive.  Part of The Stone Gryphon story cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What has gone before, D-Day Minus 18 Months

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Rule of Threes Raid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4620429) by [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake). 



> Introduction
> 
> In the early spring 1943, Peter Pevensie leaves school and enters and completes basic training. Major al-Masri – Asim bin Kalil – a British Army intelligence officer and self-appointed retainer and guide to the Pevensies, intends to help Peter land in D Company of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.
> 
> In the meantime, Susan builds upon her successes in spycraft told in The Queen Susan in Tashbaan. In the summer of 1942, operating under the alias of Mrs. Susan Caspian, Susan begins working for Colonel George Walker-Smythe in the office of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the British Embassy in Washington. Susan "babysits" an SOE agent, Wing Commander Reginald Tebbitt, and together they manufacture fake documents, plant news stories, steal secrets, seduce politicians, and thwart a Soviet spy, all to further the British war effort. Upon returning to England, Susan, hopes that with her mentors' assistance, her fake identities, and her mother's consent, she will be permitted to leave school in early 1943 and re-join the SOE as an active agent.
> 
> Those familiar with TQSiT know that the story took a turn toward historical fiction with its heavy reliance about the real people and real events described in J. Conant's The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington. The people, places, and events here are real with the following exceptions: Susan's three mentors in England, al-Masri, Walker-Smythe, and Tebbitt who were all previously introduced in TSG; and Leutnant Becker and Feldwebel Müeller. With these exceptions, everyone else in the story really lived, they really did these heroic things, they really died and books, websites, and plaques in famous places bear their names and tell their stories. It is with great caution and trepidation that I insert fictional characters into this historical and very well-known account. My intent is to do so carefully, with respect, and with the knowledge that this is not the first time these people and their contributions to World War II have been fictionalized.
> 
> Peter and Susan will not be usurping what other, real heroes did. Given the enormous scope of World War 2, I've had to leave out many parts and details. This is, in the end, historical fiction, not history and I tell a narrow piece of it, primarily from the points of view of characters who do not know as much as the reader does of the bigger picture.
> 
> Last, this is teen rated, most especially for a soldier's salty language. When the Generals are crude (and search the text of George Patton's D-Day speech for that), one can expect the same of the common soldier. Further, Susan moves as an adult woman through an adult world and she has some unresolved business with Wing Commander Reginald Tebbitt.
> 
> Rat and Sword Go To War was written for the 2012 Narnia Big Bang Challenge hosted on the Narnia Fic Exchange Live Journal Community. I urge you to check out the wonderful stories posted there. In my Live Journal I have links to maps, cast of (real and fictional) characters, and a glossary of terms.
> 
> A huge thanks to Autumnia and amine_eyes for the beta and to Clio and Lady of the Light for the poetry in later chapters. Heverus did beautiful art for this story that is available at the Narnia Fic Exchange Community.

 

* * *

It had been a long, grueling flight over the North Atlantic for them both. First Washington to New York, then from New York to Glasgow with stops in Gander and Prestwick. From there, Wing Commander Tebbitt had gone on to London to see his mother and sisters. George found his wife in Edinburgh working at the shipyards and their daughter had left school in Carlisle and joined her there. It had been almost two years and seeing them was probably worse than just exchanging letters. He was a stranger to his wife and adolescent daughter.

Three days later with everything said that could be said and no reason to stay, he reported to London. He was assigned temporary, shabby rooms off Portman Square whose only advantage was their vicinity to the Special Operation Executive's Baker Street offices and that he did not have to share them with three other men. George knew that in the apartment at Orchard Court, where SOE agents for the F section stayed while awaiting their final orders, the quarters were sometimes so cramped, briefings could occur in the art deco lavatory where you could, if you wished, conduct an interview seated upon a black onyx bidet.

His Baker Street office was more spacious and he spent a week getting firsthand briefings, which was a very pleasant change from his long stint at the British Embassy in Washington. Libya had fallen; Hitler had recalled Rommel from North Africa; it was only a matter of time in Tunisia. With the agreement of the Casablanca conference between Churchill and Roosevelt, it would be Sicily that summer and then, finally, the second front, in France, in 1944. It made the SOE's F section work of inserting agents into France all the more important so things were very busy.

Seeing the opportunities open up, he sent Tebbitt off to Thame Park for a refresher in wireless training that would keep him occupied for a week – two if the latest agents there for training were attractive, which they invariably were. He did have to wonder if striking looks and trim figure were on the intake sheets Selwyn Jepson used when interviewing female candidates for insertion into France as SOE spies.

Finally, now, the meeting could take place that George had wanted since realizing that Susan Pevensie, working name Mrs. Susan Caspian, and her brother, Edmund Pevensie, had run a complex cipher for three months that fooled the espionage establishment in two countries. George had taken to personally calling it _Operation Narnia_.

He summoned to Baker Street the man who had cut off and tied up all the dangling bits of that security breach on this side of the Atlantic. Major al-Masri arrived so promptly from Bletchley Park George concluded the impatience to meet was mutual. George had read al-Masri's file and seen the official, grainy, black and white photograph. al-Masri was shorter than he expected, very neat, and obviously not English. He would assume the man had checked on him as well.

al-Masri offered his hand. "Colonel Walker-Smythe, it is a pleasure to meet you."

"And you, al-Masri. Sit, please. Should I have one of the girls get us some coffee?"

"I am fine for now but we may require fortification later," al-Masri replied. The office was big enough for a desk and chair and a separate table and chairs. The Major sat there rather than on the other side of the desk. The man was certainly confident to assume this was to be a working meeting rather than an interview.

George took the seat across the table from him. They sat in silence, staring at one another. George finally cleared his throat. "I have wanted to meet you for some time now."

"And I was about to say the same thing. So which of us shall speak first into this billowing silence?"

George knew just where to begin. "Someone who worked for me once used to say that given a silence, most people have the desire to fill it."

al-Masri nodded. "I understand that lesson concludes, 'And the trick is knowing the impulse exists and training yourself to patience in its place.'"

"It seems we have had access to the same personnel, Major."

"And that the Pevensies all had the benefit of the same wise teacher."

George hoped the man's desire to exchange information would be stronger than the reticence. Being forthcoming was not a natural trait in a spy, though certainly curiosity was.

"You have the advantage on me, al-Masri. I know Mrs. Caspian well, but have not seen her the better part of six months since she left Washington with her mother. I have not met either of her brothers. You have, and your knowledge is more current. Tell me the situation."

The Major leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, making himself comfortable and taking it as an invitation rather than near order. "Addressing Mrs. Caspian first, I have only met her once, though we have exchanged several letters. I have reiterated to her that she must not discuss the espionage work of last summer in Washington or she would jeopardize her future with us. Further, I have been monitoring her language instruction with Madame Simon and ensuring that her school does not interfere."

"And?" He knew that Madame Simon had written to Vera Atkins in F Section about Mrs. Caspian and through that channel had assumed all was proceeding without interruption.

"She makes excellent and diligent progress. Her other classwork suffers but I deem that of no consequence."

"Thank you."

"There was also the matter of the locksmith, of which you might not have heard."

"Locksmith?" George repeated. "What did she get herself into?"

"At Christmas, she and Edmund wrote me that they required a set of basic lockpicking tools and asked if I might know where a set could be obtained."

Of all the cheek, though credit to them for being discreet in making the inquiry. "She's a first rate cracksman as our resident burglar is fond of saying. He gave her a full set of picks before she left America. What the devil does she need another set for?"

al-Masri shook his head. "I do not know but I assumed she wished to teach the skill to someone else in need of it."

"And she did this all with Edmund? Her brother is still in on it all?"

"I think you should assume so, yes. I did direct them to one of our establishments and set up some modest surveillance to observe what they would do."

He wished he could have observed it himself. "And?"

"Mrs. Caspian presented herself, quite convincingly, as a French woman with Edmund acting as her interpreter and guide. She dressed for the part, having acquired a dated continental wardrobe through a Wren assigned to Bletchley Park and the acquisition of the picks was handled very neatly."

al-Masri looked very smug. "I did speak with Mr. Walker, the locksmith, afterwards. He assumed Mrs. Caspian was in her mid-twenties, at least. I, of course, did not enlighten him as to the truth. He was impressed at the dissembling in both Susan and Edmund, which surprised me not at all."

George was not surprised by any of this, either. Here was the opening he had wanted – someone else, a fellow hand, who could confirm that it had not been invention. Tebbitt had been fooled, but the man was in love and George had wanted a more jaundiced eye.

"So you _have_ seen it?" If he had to explain of what he spoke, there was no purpose to all of this.

al-Masri was silent for so long, he wondered if it was another ploy to get him to speak unwisely. He opened his mouth to challenge the Major on the stalling tactic, but al-Masri held up his hand. "I am not using the ploy the Pevensies do. To answer the easy question first, yes, Colonel, I have seen what you do."

"I've not shared my observations with anyone else," George admitted. "After I confronted her about that damnable Narnia cipher, I theorized that Mrs. Caspian's inexplicable talents were shared with her siblings, though not the parents."

"I cannot speak to the youngest sister, as I have not met her." The Major sounded uncommonly wistful. "But your theory was correct. I have observed the same in Mrs. Caspian's older brother, Peter, and, though I have seen him only a handful of times, Edmund as well. To respond to your unasked and harder question, I know no more than you do as to what can account for their remarkable maturity and skills."

"al-Masri, you say it is a familial trait yet you reported to me after buttoning him up that Edmund Pevensie was a loyal English schoolboy!"

"And so he is," al-Masri replied calmly. "But that is not all he is."

"Well that's a damned clever nuance, Major." He should have known better. al-Masri had done what George had done himself in the report regarding Guy Hill's murder. He'd left out Mrs. Caspian's role in coshing the murderer with a flower pot and attempt to stab him with a letter opener. An accurate report would come across as completely daft unless one experienced a Pevensie firsthand.

"What about Peter? I know he's in basic training now. His father has pushed very hard to bring Peter on and Mrs. Caspian said he might suit. I'd very much like to take him back with me to Washington."

From the sudden, guarded expression, George didn't think al-Masri had anticipated this. Were they going to tussle over talent? Finally, the Major said, "I have come to know Peter Pevensie very well, Colonel. Peter's will is at least equal to that of his sister. He is as determined to enter the paras as Mrs. Caspian is determined to enter the SOE."

"But with her recommendation? Their father's request? With your…" George let the sentence dangle. "No?"

"No," the Major repeated firmly. "You will have to forgive me for sounding fanciful, though surely you understand knowing Mrs. Caspian so well. Peter is like a shining sword, sharp, bright, and true, and he is not one who is comfortable in the shadows."

It did sound fanciful. Ridiculous even. But George had seen visions of the Queen of Pentacles in the half light of his office one evening. Mrs. Caspian carried herself with a regal authority and confidence that even the thirty years or so he thought she had lived already could not wholly account for.

"So Peter's not a spy?"

"No," al-Masri replied.

"Then what is he good for?" George pressed. He was not going to let talent go untapped.

"For all his commitment to serve, Peter knows he would be a very, very ill fit in many typical postings. Once he completes basic training, I hope to see him transferred into the Ox & Bucks, Second Battalion. They've been retooled as part of the Glider Corps."

"And no officer training? Won't he be wasted as a common private in the infantry?"

"I do not believe so. Peter observed himself that assurance of competent command and some autonomy under that command are more important than the particular position. I concur with that assessment and believe he will do well under D Company's CO, Major Howard."

"What of Edmund? He's what, 14 now?"

al-Masri frowned and for the first time, looked uncertain. "I do not know, Colonel. Edmund has already sought my advice on how to position himself to enter our service which he is pursuing with the zeal I would expect of him. Unlike Peter and Susan, he is too young to finesse his way into service. And I have misgivings regardless."

"Misgivings?" he retorted shortly. "Mrs. Caspian believed his talents were even greater than her own."

"I do not disagree." Again the silence lengthened between them.

"al-Masri, you got your way with Peter. You can't have Edmund, too. That's not sporting."

"What would you have him do? What _could_ he do?"

"Take him back with me to Washington for a year. Pass him off as a nephew if I need to. If he's anything like his sister, I'll put him in a Private's uniform and he can work as my clerk and secretary."

"Edmund would jump at the opportunity," al-Masri said heavily.

Edmund couldn't do what Tebbitt had done, but he could use someone with the same insights Mrs. Caspian had. George didn't want to cross al-Masri when he wanted the man's support with Mrs. Caspian, but he didn't like to lose, either.

"Would you oppose that?" George asked.

The long silence was concerning but finally al-Masri said, "Even if I thought it a bad idea, I would not oppose you, Colonel."

"But Edmund _will_ ask you and you _could_ warn him off."

"Yes, and Edmund would listen, carefully consider his options and my advice, and probably go anyway, though be far more guarded about it."

"That's not a bad thing," George pointed out.

His phone began ringing. His secretary would pick it up and take the message.

"I think maybe that coffee now." George got up, went to his door, and bellowed out into the corridor, "Coffee for two!"

He returned to his seat. "You know, al-Masri, I was able to keep an eye on what Mrs. Caspian got up to in Washington and I'd keep Edmund from getting in too deep. I'll use him, but I won't corrupt him."

He seemed to relax. "Colonel, you raise excellent points and do reassure me. I think Edmund would benefit from some wise oversight."

"Good. I'll speak to Edmund's mother and see what might be done. It won't be that long; I'm sure I'll be back here by year's end for the second front. As to Mrs. Caspian, I've asked Selwyn Jepson to interview her."

"An excellent idea. I will be curious to hear what your most skilled talent spotter makes of her."

The Wren arrived with the coffee. They both tried to dissolve the Nescafe crystals in the tepid water and George indulged in a little sugar to make it palatable. Major al-Masri took his black.

Once the Wren left, al-Masri asked, "I assume you will not tell Jepson her age?"

"No," George scoffed. "The fewer who know, the better. Her mother has already consented. If she impresses Jepson, I'll have her pulled from school and sent on to Beaulieu."

Major al-Masri paused in stirring his cup. "Straight to Finishing School? What of the preliminary training at Wanborough? Granted she probably does not need most of what they teach, but omit it entirely? She will need Morse Code and wireless training, and she'll need to qualify for parachute jumps at Ringway. And what of the guerilla course in Arisaig?"

"She will be at Beaulieu as staff, not an agent in training. I think she would benefit from time in that environment, learn to be the woman she is, and let them see her for themselves."

The window rattled as a plane flew overhead – a Spitfire from the sound.

al-Masri nodded. "True. And Mrs. Caspian is not French so she does need considerably more grooming by those who are. Also, I cannot yet see what type of position would best suit her talents, which would come into clearer focus with more time there."

"I am glad you approve, Major," George replied, though al-Masri ignored the sarcasm. al-Masri's choice of words was peculiar in how he would see something for Mrs. Caspian. It was very much the sort of thing Agnes would have said. Agnes, the astonishingly gifted amateur psychologist and maid, had predicted last year in Tarot cards that Mrs. Caspian would find a special guide – the Hierophant who had shackled the Chariot's competing forces of darkness and light to do his bidding. Mrs. Caspian had written Agnes that she believed she had met this Hierophant; before he had left America, Agnes had exhorted him to learn the details about this strange guide. It was all completely inexplicable to anyone who did not know Agnes and Mrs. Caspian, but George suspected both women believed al-Masri to be the looked-for guide.

Confirming George's speculation, al-Masri said, "Where the Pevensies are concerned, you and I are of the same mind. In fact, should Mrs. Caspian enter the SOE, I intend to accept an outstanding offer to teach guerilla tactics at the Scotland facilities to better keep an eye on things."

"They finally see the benefit of having someone teach killing who has actually done it?"

"And who has not gone to prison for doing so."

He could finally laugh at that. George knew al-Masri's history and had seen the blanks in the man's file. He had a few blanks in his own file, though not nearly as many as al-Masri. "It does put me more at ease for her to have an ally there who knows the truth of her age. I've decided to send Wing Commander Tebbitt into the SOE training school as well, as instructor, not agent."

"Is he the Lord Peridan in her cipher? The agent she managed in Washington?"

"The same. He needs a change and will be useful to them. The man's a poet and very good with codes."

The SOE had discovered too late that while using well known-poems made for ciphers the agents could memorize and use easily in the field, all the Nazis had needed was an anthology of English verse to break them.

"And if Mrs. Caspian does go active, he'll be in place to serve as her conducting officer. Tebbitt will keep an eye on her."

Tebbitt would probably have both hands on her as well, but George couldn't worry about that.

They exchanged pleasantries and cards and George felt better about having someone here keeping an eye on his protégé while he was back in Washington.

"So, tell me something, al-Masri."

al-Masri looked up from the train schedule he was contemplating. "Colonel?"

"You said Peter is the sword. What then is Mrs. Caspian?"

"What do you think?" al-Masri countered, as a spy would.

Anyone who hadn't seen it would consider him barking mad. "I saw something of a royal mien in her. It does as you say, sound fanciful, but I thought her like a Queen."

"It took me all summer to come to a similar conclusion about Peter."

"A King among mere men?

"Very much so."

They were daft, both of them. They were also spies and trained to detect the falsehood and they both had realized that the paper, cover stories, and youthful appearances were lies. Peter and Susan Pevensie were not schoolchildren. al-Masri put on his cap, tucked his railway table in his valise and picked up his coat.

"In answer to your question, Colonel, if Peter is the true, straight sword of the King, in Mrs. Caspian I see the clever and subtle cunning of the rat."

* * *

March 1943

From: Selwyn Jepson  
Hotel Victoria  
Northumberland Avenue

To: Vera Atkins, F Section; Col. Walker-Smythe  
Baker Street

I have, at your request, interviewed Mrs. Susan Caspian for purposes of assessing her suitability for the SOE and possible placement in France. Given her exemplary work in 1942 for Col. Walker-Smythe at the Embassy to the U.S., I recognize that this was little more than a formality. Indeed I am curious as to why you are so insistent that I meet with Mrs. Caspian and why she should not be immediately sent on to Wanborough for preliminary training.

I am usually concerned when a candidate speaks so enthusiastically of espionage and the possibility of death by torture and hanging at the hands of Nazi captors. We do not wish for those who seek us out to in turn seek vainglory and romanticise of fantastic and glorious ends. I came away perplexed as to the source of her certitude that this is where she should be, indeed, must be, and there is about her near the air of an Apostle on the road to Rome, or of the zealot making straight the way.

Mrs. Caspian has great affection for her brothers and sister. One brother recently completed basic training and is awaiting a hoped-for transfer. The younger siblings are still in school.

We spoke of her absent husband. She gave a very clear-eyed and unsentimental view of it. He was, she said, injured during the Malta air operations and recuperated in Surrey and is staying with his mother. They hope he shall be returned to unit by the summer. She emphasized he was fully supportive of her decision and of course we will have to assure that he has given his consent for his wife to be engaged in such hazardous activities.

Other than her husband's injury, and unlike other candidates, she has not, as yet, suffered personal loss which accounts for her passion. She speaks ardently of the plight of Jews and of the oppressed nations of Europe. She was steadfastly insistent that this was work she was qualified, nay, destined to do.

There are, fortunately, no children.

As Mrs. Caspian already knew our many family secrets, I deemed it appropriate to discuss her time in Washington. She felt great sorrow at the murder of their office's driver, killed by the apparent agent Walker-Smythe believes was a Soviet. Walker-Smythe had doctored the reports to keep her out of the business so I wished to hear the full of it in her own voice. She retold the tale calmly but insisted that she bore some responsibility for failing to foresee the calamity of Guy Hill's death. Her guilt is disproportionate to the clues that were available, which is concerning if it makes her too cautious. That she saw the clues at all is remarkable for it demonstrates a subtle and perceptive mind not usually seen in a woman prior to training, and often not even then.

She was justifiably proud of the theft of the documents from the American Vice President's valise. I had not known that the stolen case had required her lockpicking skills, and under extreme pressure, as well. It was not, she admitted, a complex lock, but that she was able to accomplish it at all and without supervision showed verve and initiative as well as suitably flexible morality.

She expressed satisfaction with the business involving the creation and planting of the fake map and believed that these and other efforts were justified to assure the delivery of the Sherman tanks and other materiel to Monty in advance of El Alamein and Operation Torch.

I asked if she had any regret, apart from the murder of Mr. Hill. I wondered at her long and careful pause, a needless concern on my part. She apologized in advance for offending my sensibilities but admitted that the most difficult part of the work was that she ordered Wing Commander Tebbitt to the boudoir of a newspaper woman in order to accomplish an exchange of information regarding Vice President Wallace. She had no regrets, again believing the information obtained worth the price exacted, but regretted it nonetheless.

Mrs. Caspian is cautious, carefully spoken, intelligent, and we already know that she can think quickly and decisively in dangerous, stressful, and combat situations. Assuming that she can master the language and challenges of living in France under occupation, I have no reservations in recommending Mrs. Caspian's further assessment at Wanborough.

My one misgiving is her appearance. She is a prodigiously attractive woman, but one must look beyond those arts we use to hide our true selves. Beneath her very careful coif, Mrs. Caspian appears younger than her 24 years. In some settings, this will be of no concern and might also be used advantageously. While she professed comfort with and enthusiasm for "living rough," as our people must, her very youthful mien may disadvantage her credibility in some circumstances.

S. Jepson

* * *

To: Col. G. Walker-Smythe  
From: S. Jepson

Good to see you on this side of the pond. Saw your Mrs. C today. Don't understand your misgivings. She's first rate. Pity about her husband.

* * *

His Royal Majesty's Army

To: Peter Pevensie

Your request for transfer has been approved. You are ordered to report immediately to Bulford Camp, Wiltshire, for assignment to Major Howard, D Company, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, 2d Battalion, Air Landing Unit, 6th Airborne Division.

* * *

A few notes: Noted fiction writer Selwyn Jepson was indeed a talent spotter for the SOE during the war and he conducted interviews of prospective candidates from the Victoria Hotel. His role is described in two of my sources for the SOE part of the story, Rita Kramer's _Flames in the Field_ and Marcus Binney's _The Women Who Lived For Danger_. Vera Atkins was in F Section of the SOE reporting to Col. Maurice Buckmaster. Jepson and Atkins had special responsibility for recruiting women agents for insertion into France, which became a very urgent matter as men were arrested and conscripted into work crews or sent off to fight.

Training of agents involved a series of steps, assessment at Wanborough, guerrilla training at Arisaig in Inverness-shire, qualifying for parachute jumps at Ringway or another base, wireless, telegraphy and Morse Code training (referred to as w/t) at Thame Park, and finally "finishing school" at Beaulieu. The overlap with Chapter 1 of Apostolic Way ends here.

Chapter 2, D-Day minus 1 year, Training Days, follows.


	2. Training Days, D-Day minus 1 year to D-Day minus 6 months

Medieval armour, sword and shield _did not_ weigh less than a full pack, 9-mm Sten submachine gun, ammunition, the magazines for the squad's Bren machine gun and the mortars for the anti-tank gun. Private Peter Pevensie of the Ox  & Bucks 2d Battalion, D Company, knew this for fact because he'd been marching with his pack, ammunition, and gun for the last three days. Granted, Peter had never had the pleasure of heaving armour, sword, and shield across southern Exmoor and into the Somerset levels. Still, muscle memory did not fail him and he was certain what he carried now weighed more than what he had carried then.

He had also learned that whether in Narnia or Southwest England, makeshift army camps were much the same, except that in Narnia, a High King did not have to polish his own boots and clean his own weapons.

Peter took advantage of a break in the pre-dawn drizzle to pull his last pair of dry socks from his pack. He put them on quickly and then slid his boots on before everything turned to the feel and odor of wet sheep – something the High King of Narnia also knew very well, along with wet Talking Dog, wet Talking Horse, and worst of all, wet Giant.

His Company had camped on the downs – a cold, wet night it had been – and would be moving out any moment. The officers were striding about, making sure everything had been struck and calling orders to the last lazy private. Moving his toes in the leather boots, Peter could feel the blisters on top of blisters.

It was his own fault. Peter had passed up other opportunities – including a very polite and pointed invitation to the Officer Training Corps – to be here, in the mud. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. He'd heeded the advice of Major al-Masri who knew the CO of D Company personally. On the strength of that recommendation, Peter had sought this assignment and called in meager chits to get it, despite his father's howling protests that his eldest son would never go into the infantry and as an OR no less. He couldn't really explain to his father, _I'm an Oxford-bound Private in a Company of Cockney Londoners, policemen, window-washers, and taxi drivers because a Lion told me to._

He'd led Narnia and fought for her. He couldn't return there ever again. But over the last year he'd realised that Narnia and England were not as different as he'd supposed and that England needed him to use here what had been learned there.

That was the theory, at least. Peter didn't feel Aslan's paw often but he had thought he had discerned it here.

He wondered if he'd missed some essential part of the Lion's instruction because this surely was not what Aslan had intended. Once a King and now the lowest of the low and among the youngest in the non-officer ranks of said window-washers and taxi drivers. Ruled a nation, fought battles, led an army and now the only perspective was that of the soldier's shirt in front of him and the orders shouted down from on high.

Peter moved the things about in his pack so the whole would ride more comfortably on his back for the next twenty miles. Another irony. He'd thought he'd signed up for the Glider Corps. The Ox & Bucks 2d Battalion had been re-tooled to the Glider Corps of the 6th Airborne paratroopers. Gryphon-back, Peter had loved flying. Boats were out of the question; Peter hated boats. Joining up with the paras of the 6th Airborne should have meant time in the air in soaring gliders. He hadn't done any of that yet, either.

The only thing of his past life of remotely useful purpose was the ability to run full tilt with armour, sword, and shield. Under the direction of D Company's CO, the Mad Bastard Major John Howard, Peter was similarly weighted down and running. Or jogging. Or marching. Or double-time marching.

Major al-Masri had said Major Howard was a good man, the very best, destined for great things, and building a terrific, elite unit that would be doing something important, in time. Major al-Masri had omitted the mad bastard part. And Peter was having a hard time seeing that they were going anywhere except from one hillock and moor to another.

Lion's Mane, he hoped there was some point to all this because the last three days had been a very special brand of Tash's hell. Lately, it felt that the only thing keeping him here was the humiliation of admitting to his father that he had been mistaken and to yes, _please_ , have those important men in New York and Washington pull those short strings and get him reassigned somewhere more interesting. It had been his for the asking and he had rejected it, leaving Edmund to take Peter's place in Washington. If he'd gone into officer training, he would have had his own batman – squire – to clean his boots.

Instead, it was all marching, mud, and scraping off the muck of southern England himself.

It hadn't all been ghastly. General Browning had sent them to Devon for a fantastic month of cliff climbing at Ilfracombe. The prospect of now returning to Bulford base for more drilling, marching, jogging, and running through the wilds of Wiltshire was just too dreary. The first time they had done laps around Stonehenge, a mere ten-mile jog from the Bulford army base barracks, it had been thrilling. By now, Peter knew every hummock and molehill within 30 miles of Bulford because he had marched or run or jogged over every one of them. After a month in Devon scaling cliffs, they didn't want to return, now made much worse because General Browning had ordered the lot of them to _march_ the 130 miles back to the base.

And if the whole regiment was marching across Devonshire and Somerset, damn it but the Mad Bastard was going to make a competition out of it and D Company was going to march faster than the others and beat the other Companies back to the base they weren't in any hurry to get back to. Now, marching all the way to the action in Italy? Yes. Marching five days back to Bulford, in the heat of the summer in serge uniform? No. Definitely, no.

It had been blistering hot the first two days. Now a cold, wet rain fell. Peter tightened the laces on his boots.

"Company, fall in!" the Mad Bastard shouted.

Peter, and the 118 other men of D Company, all moved. He stood and as he hefted his pack, he felt his boots sink a few inches into the soft mud of Somerset. He pulled his feet out with a soft squelch and already felt the cold rain trickle down his neck and into the intimate space on his back beneath shirt and pack.

"You heard the Major," Lieutenant Brotheridge called. Peter slogged to his place, second from the bottom in Brotheridge's platoon.

"We're ahead of the other companies by at least four hours!" Major Howard roared, striding up and down the line in the spitting rain. He was swinging his army walking stick. Peter had three shillings down against two of the other men in his platoon, Parr and Bailey, about whether the Mad Bastard would wear the inch of brass off the bottom of that walking stick by the time they made it back to Bulford. The other two of their gang, Gray and Gardner, were in on it and were going to measure the brass left on the stick when they got back to base. Bailey had tried to throw the wager for Parr by getting Major Howard onto a bicycle like a civilized officer.

Peter knew that wasn't going to happen – he'd win the wager even if Parr wouldn't pay up. Major Howard was a fanatic. If his men marched, he would march and all his junior officers, his subalterns, would march, too. Peter recognized that feeling and he respected it. As much as he hated the infantry, he did respect Major Howard's command, and Lieutenant Brotheridge, his own platoon leader.

They formed the ragged line, but the company wasn't moving out. There was some murmur and fuss. Standing on toes, trying to not tip over from the weight of the pack, from the back row, Peter could just see over the men and their bulging, soggy equipment.

Parr and Bailey were in the front of the Company, on their knees, in the dark mud, hands clasped in front of them. They looked like big, filthy, choir boys in a Tommy's soggy serge.

"Parr! Bailey! What are you doing down there!" Mad Bastard Howard barked. "Get up! We're moving!"

"Please, sir!" Parr inched on his knees toward Major Howard who towered over them. "We've marched 80 miles in three days! We've marched our legs right off! We don't got any legs to march on!"

"Too bad, boys!" Howard yelled as the men all laughed. "If you don't have legs, you'll just have to take the last fifty miles on your hands." The Major swung his stick and turned about, managing to make it look smart even in the mud. "Company fall out!"

And they did. Parr and Bailey were laughing, still on their knees. Peter squelched over to them and gave Bailey a hand up. Parr got a hand from Gardner.

Wally Parr, Jack Bailey, Charlie Gardner, and Billy Gray, Brotheridge's batman, had taken the "schoolboy Pevensie" under their wing. All that meant was that, as the youngest and most junior in Brotheridge's platoon, Peter got to buy their drinks and light their smokes. Years in public schools and Peter knew how to live under the fagging system; the common ROs enjoyed seeing an Oxford-bound classics scholar sweeping their barracks.

"Mad Bastard," Gray muttered with a look at the retreating back of their CO. "Mad, ambitious bastard. He'll get us all killed."

"We march faster, we get back faster, we get in ahead of the other Companies, and we take all the hot water and the food," Peter said, thumping Gray on the pack. Not that the food was worth hurrying back for, either. They lined up with the others and began marching.

"You forgot the girls, Pevensie," Bailey said, flicking mud at Parr and matching the synchronicity of the marching company.

"Pevensie never forgets the girls!" Parr hooted.

"Them, too," Peter retorted. "That was so obvious, I didn't see to mention them."

"Might as well forget 'em," Gray said, gloomy. "The birds all fly off with the Yanks."

"It's damn unpatriotic is what it is," Bailey griped, repeating the complaint that had become all too common since the Americans moved to Tidworth, with their nice uniforms and all their cash and chocolate. The girls of Salisbury weren't interested in a lonely, broke Tommy when the Yanks were about.

"More marching, less chattering!" Brotheridge ordered, jogging along beside them.

Together, they all fell in with the rest of D Company and marched, the quick step of the light infantry, and they'd dance another 50 miles back to base.

* * *

June 1943  
Wanborough Manor, Guildford, Surrey  
Subject: Notes by instructors and staff regarding student Mrs. Susan Caspian

 

Student was transferred here from staff assistant position at Beaulieu. Purpose is to assess suitability for further training. Handled transition easily and enthusiastically. Very keen to be here and grateful for the chance to prove herself. Very knowledgeable. Helping other students learn the ropes and rails.

Student is working hard to be fit; doesn't complain about the early morning runs; she is game and eager but not overly competitive.

Contrary to her youthful appearance, this student is very serious and earnest, and very mature beyond her years.

Student can ride a bicycle and has learned the motorbike. I hope her driving skills improve. No one wants to drive with her now after a problem with some dustbins and an oak tree.

Student has adequate but not natural mechanical skills. Given clear instructions, she will follow them precisely and can patch a tyre on a bicycle, lubricate cylinders on a motorbike, or repair a wireless. Not a tinkerer or inventor by nature.

Students needs work on language and has never lived in France. This could be fatal and she knows it. To her credit, she's working very hard at it, queries everyone about life there. She is always taking notes, reading, observing, and practising.

Caught student at mess copying how the French students eat and what they eat. Commended her for her observational skills.

Student learns codes and ciphers easily; picked up Morse Code uncommonly quickly. She admitted to studying it in advance and practising it on tabletops. Recommend her for w/t training.

Student never complains of the physical rigours at all. Strong arm, sharp eye, good endurance, decent speed at running and jumping, can pull herself up. Better than all the women and most of the men at swimming.

Student is almost an actress in ability to play a role. Admitted Walker-Smythe taught her importance of living her cover. Significant improvement in language even over last four weeks. Recommend she proceed to guerrilla training in Arisaig.

* * *

"Hey! Pevensie!"

A hand shook him roughly.

"Piss off, Parr. I'm sleeping."

"Come on, Pevensie! You were up for it before! Can't let your platoon down!"

"It's not the platoon. It's you and Gray."

"We're the heart of the platoon!" Parr whispered. "We need you."

Peter grabbed his blanket and rolled on his side. Major Howard called them all scallywags and troublemakers and Corporal Parr was the chief instigator.

"No. If we go through with this, we'll get RTU'd."

He was not going to get kicked out of the most elite glider company in the 6th Airborne because Parr had (another) mad idea. He knew it was the most elite because they kept telling themselves that, and because Mad Bastard Howard worked them ten times harder than any of the other glider companies. Keep saying it long enough and you start to believe it.

Parr peeled the blanket off and patted his cheek. "Not with your good looks and long legs, pretty boy Pevensie. 'Sides, you said you knew how to break in."

_Me and my big drunken mouth._

Peter groaned and tried to pull the wool blanket over his head.

"You saying that was all just talk and you fancy Nancy public school girls aren't up for picking a NAAFI lock?"

Parr roughed him again on the shoulder.

"And if you don't come, the whole platoon will know you're just a double crossing piker who's too good to get his hands dirty."

That wasn't fair and the bastard Parr knew it. He gave as good as he got.

"You aren't leaving until I get up, are you?"

"No. Come on, mate. Do us a favour, yeah?"

With a sigh, Peter rolled over and sat up. He pulled on his trousers and bent over to slide his feet into his boots. His ID discs swung and clinked from his neck and he shoved them into his undershirt. _It's the middle of the night and a damned London Cockney Corporal's got me breaking into the Bulford base NAAFI canteen._

_What had he become?_

Was there anything worth stealing from the NAAFI? He didn't want more tinned food. If they took cigarettes, whiskey or proper food, all they'd be doing was robbing one poor Tommy for the benefit of another Tommy and that wasn't fair. They were all in this misery together.

God, he was so bored with the marching and drilling and shooting crackers and blanks, sneaking with Parr into the NAAFI seemed like a good idea. There was something very wrong with his thinking. Being so fagged was affecting his judgment.

Parr and Gray were already outside the spider block when he eased out of the barrack, his escape covered by thunderous snores. The Mad Bastard was running them too hard for this sort of prank in the middle of the night. Squinting, he could make out that it was barely 0400 on his watch. "If I get RTU'd for this, Parr, they'll never find your body."

"You'd murder a married man, Pevensie?"

"I'd be doing your wife a favour."

Parr leading, they snuck around the other blocks and barracks. Peter felt alert and ready, and was spoiling for a fight. It was bracing outside, cool and damp. There'd be rain in a few hours.

"Never thought I'd be grateful for the Mad Bastard's night exercises," Gray muttered.

He had to admit that sneaking around in the dark was a lot easier since Major Howard started training them at night. The saying was that Jerry didn't like to fight at night. The problem was that Tommy didn't like to fight at night either and the Mad Bastard had aimed to change that thinking.

"Do you think he knows yet what we'll be doing?" Peter asked. "Where we're going? When?"

"No," Parr replied. "I heard Captain Priday asking the same thing and if the Major's SIC don't know, Major Mad Bastard don't know either."

D Company was kept in a spider block separate from the other barracks. It added to their sense of being elite and held for something special, which was undoubtedly a dangerous, highly specialized mission requiring marching faster than anyone else, running longer, and carrying more ammunition to pretend to blow things up.

The distance meant it was a long, dark walk to the NAAFI canteen. The nerviest part was sticking to the shadows of the HQ, because if there was a guard about, that was where he'd be. There wasn't, but the three of them were really quiet too. Parr led them by the Nissen huts, Officers' Mess, and the workshops and laundry. The backdoor of the NAAFI opened out toward the parade grounds, so there wasn't anyone there.

Peter crouched down at the door handle. "Gray, give me a quick light, would you?" From his pocket, Peter drew out the torsion wrench and pick. Guided by the torch light, he carefully inserted the wrench into the lock and got to work.

"You can shut it off now," he told Gray. It wasn't a complicated lock. This wasn't the arsenal; it was just the NAAFI with its comic books, tinned meat, tea, and razors.

"Where did you learn locks, Pevensie?" Parr asked. "Were you sneaking into the girls' rooms at the boarding school across the pitch from that fancy school you were in?"

"My sister."

"You were breaking into your sister's room? You twisted bastard."

"My sister taught me locks," Peter said, inserting another pick and feeling for the pins. Susan and Edmund had obtained a set of picks for Jill Pole at Christmas and Susan had taught him the basics of it. Where was Susan now? The last letter had been weeks ago, with everything all blacked out by censors. Doing a spy's work, somewhere, he supposed. Even that sounded better than what he'd been doing. Maybe he should write her. Maybe he should find out if her outfit needed an extra private who excelled at marching and shooting guns with blanks.

There was an audible _click_ as the pins fell into place.

"Damn it, Pevensie, I take back all the things I said about you just being a girl."

"Say that to my youngest sister and she'd stab you, Parr." Peter pushed the door open, stood, and carefully wrapped up the wrench and picks.

"Is she the one that taught you how to pick locks?" Gray asked, shining his torch inside the NAAFI.

"No, that's the older one. And she'd not settle for stabbing Parr. She'd shoot him, too."

"Savages, the lot of you," Parr said, pushing his way into the NAAFI. They fanned out into the dark canteen. It wasn't large, just a few rows of metal and wooden shelves, floor to ceiling.

"What are we going to steal?" Gray asked. "The food's so bad, who'd want it?"

"If we steal it, maybe we'll get better slop? Something from the officers' mess?" Parr disappeared down the long aisle, carefully shining his own torch on the stacked goods.

"From the way Danny Brotheridge complains, it's not any better for them," Gray said.

"We'll be in the brig, so it won't matter," Peter replied.

"Maybe the food's better there," Gray said.

"And maybe hell will freeze and Manchester United will take the cup."

Peter searched along a short aisle near the door into the main canteen. The treasure of Cair Paravel it was _not_. It was all tea and tins. On a shelf, Peter found a lone pack of Player's and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. He'd divvy them among the boys of the brotherhood, assuming Parr didn't get them all RTU'd.

"Found something!" Parr came out from behind a rack with packages in his arms. Gray shined the torch at Parr.

"What the hell you got there, Parr?"

"Soap. Soap powder. Bonjour soap. There's some Oxydol still on the shelf. Get it."

Peter could take an order from a Corporal. "Yes, sir, right away, sir."

He squeezed passed Parr to the shelf where the NAAFI girls had stored the soap. Peter felt a spasm of guilt that he was stealing and probably wasting soap that was rationed off base. Mum would be so disappointed. But Mum also had not been up before dawn for a five-mile run in less than 40 minutes, then a day of training exercises all over the Bulford base grounds – shooting, running, shooting, blowing things up, more running, and marching. Then, they rounded out the day with mandatory sports. He'd left rugger and cricket behind in school and would kick a football around with the other ORs or go for yet more running with Brotheridge and some of the other subalterns.

"We're breaking into the NAAFI and risking RTU for _soap_?"

"Do you see anything you'd want to steal?" Parr asked.

"No."

"So get moving, both of you."

Peter tossed Gray packages of soap powder. "Load up, Billy."

He took boxes of detergent himself. "Now what, boss?"

Parr led them out of the NAAFI. Peter had to juggle his boxes so he could shut the door behind them.

Parr stopped in the courtyard where they did the colours and had the flagpole. He tore open the soap flakes and started scattering them all over the cobblestone and pavers.

"Mad bastard," Gray muttered, ripping open his own package of soap flakes. Peter squinted up into the dark sky. It was going to rain soon, and hard. With a shrug he tore open the box of Oxydol detergent.

* * *

From: Private Peter Pevensie  
Bulford Base  
Salisbury  
Wiltshire

To: Edmund Pevensie  
c/o Colonel Walker-Smythe  
British Embassy  
Washington, District of Columbia  
United States of America

Dear Ed:

The good news is that I wasn't RTU'd. The bad news is that I'm in gaol for three weeks. We broke into the NAAFI, took all the soap, spread it on the walks and went back to bed. You know how I sleep. The rain began to fall and I forgot all about it until reveille. By the time I got out there, it looked like it had snowed. I've never seen so much foam and the men were sliding around it and whooping it up. So, today I write you from gaol and…

The knock on the door interrupted the last lines to Edmund. The courtesy wasn't really necessary. He was in the base brig and his gaoler did not need to be polite.

"Come in!"

Peter shoved the letter into the _Aeneid_ – for Professor Kirke's sake, not his own – and scrambled up from his bunk as Lieutenant Brotheridge opened the door. "Sir!"

Danny Brotheridge was so tall he had duck to come through the doorway into the cell.

"Sit down, Pevensie, and ease up. There's not room in here for us both to stand and I want to talk to you."

Still, he waited until the leader of his platoon sat on the stool before sitting on the edge of the bunk.

Brotheridge scooted the stool over and there was the harsh sound of wood scraping on cement. He frowned and stared at him and finally asked, "Pevensie, why are you here?"

"Sir?"

The Lieutenant leaned forward, folding his height in, elbows on knees. "You were uni-bound, right? Decent public school. Read Latin and Greek? Rugger, cricket, and fencing. You were a prefect, head boy, high marks. Your father's, what, a diplomat, I heard?"

"Something like that, sir." Peter would omit the part about Father working for high-ranking spies with a charge direct from the Prime Minister.

"Given your age, somebody looked the other way to see you in uniform, Pevensie. So, I ask again, why after all that effort did you end up here, in D Company, with a lot of boys like me? Why didn't you go to OTCU with the rest of your class?"

Brotheridge was a plain speaking man and not the sort to use double meaning, though class meant several things. There were those young men _in_ Peter's class, who were lying low, hoping they wouldn't get called up, or who were off for officer training. There were those _of_ Peter's own middle class – the sort that worked hard, went on to Uni to study esoterica and competed for coveted offices, appointments in ministries, and civil service jobs. Peter couldn't say, _I'm here because a Lion told me to_.

But some of it he could say because men like Brotheridge had wanted the same thing. "I wanted to wear the shoulder flash, sir, of Bellerophon astride Pegasus, and wear the maroon beret, of the paras."

"Because we're all so natty?"

Because the Professor and Polly had flown Fledge? Because he had worn the Lion's scarlet? Because he had soared and glided with the great Gryphons of the Narnian Aerial Corps?

"I wanted to be in the Glider Corps, sir, and didn't want to wait. And I thought I would be better in a company taking orders from top-notch officers than taking my chances elsewhere."

Brotheridge's mouth twitched, a little humourous and a little mocking. "Laying it on with a trowel won't get you out of gaol, Pevensie."

"No, sir." Peter struggled to find the words in a way that would not have him carted off straight to the infirmary as mental.

He remembered what both Richard Russell and Major al-Masri had observed. The Professor had cautioned him of it right before he left for basic training and Susan, Lucy, and Edmund had all shared the same concern. "I don't take orders well, sir. From fools, that is. Finding a place where I wasn't likely to receive stupid orders I wouldn't carry out was a priority."

" _Wouldn't_ carry out?" Brotheridge repeated, with an edge. "So you think you'd know better than command?"

The Lieutenant understood what Peter was saying. Insubordination was ugly and serious and Peter knew he was at risk for it. He nodded. "Yes, sir. And by all accounts, I didn't think I'd be getting foolish orders here, from Major Howard and his subalterns."

"You're right there, Pevensie, and I should have realised you'd have some clever explanation." Brotheridge leaned on his stool, put his back up against the wall, and stretched his legs. "You aren't supposed to be here and everyone knows it, but getting busted off to gaol and taking your licks with the rest of them isn't a bad thing. Makes you one of them, playing their games, talking their sport. Once we see action, you'll get promoted soon enough."

Peter shook his head. "It's not the rank, but thank you for saying so." That was easy for him to say. He couldn't be shoved down further than he already was. Parr had been busted down to Private from Corporal for this escapade.

Emboldened, Peter asked the question he so wanted an answer to. "There is a point to all this, isn't there? We will see action, won't we, sir?"

"That eager to kill some Jerrys, Pevensie?"

"I'm not eager to kill anyone, sir. It's just what has to be done and I want to see it done."

"Use those Oxbridge brains then. Paras dropped from a plane get scattered all over a drop zone. The Glider Corps was created to be able to put a whole fighting unit down in one place, fast, behind Nazi lines, probably among the first in a coup de main operation."

He paused. "With all your education, I'm guessing I don't need to tell you what that means."

"No, sir, though French is my sister's language, not mine."

"She's seeing action as well?"

"I don't really know, sir. I think so. She was at the Embassy in Washington in '42 and has left school. She's somewhere. Could be in France before we are, for all I know."

"It runs in your family then?"

Peter smiled at that. "It does, sir."

"Well, not to worry. It's coming and the Army wouldn't be spending all this money on us and letting Major Howard do what he is if they didn't have big plans for D Company. The Major is taking common infantry unit and turning us into first class commandos and you can bet whatever we do will be important."

"You really think so, sir?" He hated sounding so doubting but all Peter ever saw was the target, shirt, or hill right in front of him; the common RO had no view of the overall strategic objective.

"I do. You want to be part of that and I want you there, Pevensie, and so does the Major. Don't give us a reason to send you down."

"I won't, sir. Thank you."

"Also, you'll be allowed out for training. In fact, that's an order from Major Howard. We want you running with us every day and staying fit."

"Sir?"

"There's an all-Brigade running competition in two weeks. We're fielding our best twenty runners, which includes you, and we're going to beat the other companies all to hell, and put on a good show for Brigadier Kindersley."

_A foot race. Aslan's Mane, he was being let out of the brig for more cross-country running._

"Your insubordinate streak is showing, Pevensie," Brotheridge said when Peter didn't immediately respond. "You should have said, ' _thank you, sir, for letting me out to train. It's an honour to run for D Company_.'"

"Sir, doesn't all this competition seem a little…" Peter struggled to find a tactful way of saying it that wouldn't land him in more trouble.

"Off the mark? Pointless?"

"I'd add destructive, too." With Brotheridge's stern look, Peter quickly added, "but I'm sure the Major's got a good reason for it. Sir."

"Two of 'em, actually, and I think he's got the right of it. First, we've got all these young firebrands like yourself, spoiling for a fight, and he's taking all that spirit and piss and pointing it at the other companies until we can aim it at the Nazis."

Peter nodded. He'd never needed motivation like that in Narnia, but he could see it.

"Second, it means we're training harder than the other glider companies and we're better. When the time comes, when the Generals are deciding who does what, and when and where, they're going to look at D Company and say we're the best."

Not something, again, that he had ever noticed in the Narnian Army but it was certainly possible that some of their units and levies had done precisely that to get his attention, and that of the General.

"I can see that, sir. It seems like a sound plan."

Brotheridge laughed. "I'll be sure to tell the Major you approve, Private."

Peter felt a curl of anger at the condescension and beat it back down. He knew he had to put his sense of entitlement aside and earn his place, the same as the rest of them. He respected the men he was serving for. Brotheridge was right, too, about becoming part of the platoon. Getting into serious trouble had earned him a place in Parr's brotherhood along with Gray, Bailey, and Gardner.

Brotheridge stood. "That's all for now, Pevensie. Between you and me, the Major doesn't care much about NAAFI soap. It was a smart bit of work, and a good laugh, and he wants men who seize the initiative and take risks. If you come in the top five runners, I think he'll probably shave off a week of your time in here."

"I'll try, sir. I won't let the Company down."

"The Brigadier will be there, so it's another chance to show them that when it comes time to dole out the plumb assignments, they think of D Company first. That's why we're doing this."

Brotheridge clapped him on the shoulder. "I'd get some sleep while you can. After this, the Major's decided you all have too much energy, so we're going back to night exercises."

"The men will be ragging me for that."

The Lieutenant grinned. "They will, at that. Blame Parr. The Major does. After the race we're headed to a blitzed part of Southampton for street fighting training. Live ammunition, even."

That would be an exciting change of pace. "Sounds splendid, sir." Even as he spoke the words, Peter knew he didn't sound like the other men. He couldn't change that, but he could show he felt no distance, that they were all equals.

"We'll see if Lieutenant Wood can tell when the safety's on his damned Sten and not shoot me in the foot."

Peter laughed. He'd heard the story. It had happened before he'd joined D Company.

"Unless you prefer staying here? Having a cell to yourself?"

"I'd rather be with the platoon, sir. It's where I belong."

Brotheridge shook his head. "It's not, Pevensie. Not really. But we're damned glad to have you all the same."

* * *

Arisaig House, Arisaig, Inverness-shire, Guerrilla Training  
Subject: Notes by instructors and staff regarding student Mrs. Susan Caspian

 

Student's fieldcraft is among the best observed, despite being a woman. She gamely went through rugged terrain and is an inspiration to the rest of her team. Knows compass orienteering, camping, cooking, firebuilding, finds and marks trails, basic foraging, even latrine digging. Would be very good in training camps and rough country.

Student has done well with parts of weapons class. Student is better with fisticuffs and melee than guns. She's handled knives before and is skilled with them. Not real comfortable with guns but does her best to overcome it. It might be the killing, so we'll see how she does with the deer. She's not afraid of guns as some women are, she just doesn't like them.

Special note: Today, the class worked on the target range with the Big and Lil' Joes. We're not using them in the field, but in theory they can deliver a projectile or for silent assassination and it's always a good morale booster because the class likes playing Robin Hood. Student was barely courteous during lesson; I caught her whispering contrary instructions to the other students on how to handle the crossbows, load and sight the quarrels. She was visibly impatient with me.

I challenged her to do better than I did. Student stepped up to the mark, loaded the bow, and fired, dead to center.

Student shot the bows eight times each, Lil' Joe first and then the Big Joe. Never missed a shot and she ran out of room on the target's bull's eye for the arrows. It's too bad the War isn't being fought with bows and arrows because student would give us an armistice by midsummer.

* * *

The SOE kept a herd of tame deer in a pen near one of the cottages outside of Morar. The students all visited the deer, fed them, came to know them, and were encouraged to name them. Then, one by one, each student hiked with Major al-Masri some five miles from Arisaig House to the pens. Some students returned cut and bloodied; others returned shaken or grim. Women went to the lavatory and secretly wept.

When it was her turn, they left in the morning. Susan always felt on uneven ground with Major al-Masri. His duality was precisely as Agnes had predicted – the Hierophant who served two masters, one light and one dark, and confidently walked the path he wished to follow. As Asim bin Kalil he was a close friend to her brothers and sister. He had not been to Narnia but had dreamt of it and they had given him the picture of the _Dawn Treader_.

Mrs. Caspian and Major al-Masri, however, were formal and never discussed dreams, journeys, visions, and Lions. She was a student and he was a teacher and one who was always evaluating her suitability and reporting on her progress. When he was in uniform and lecturing on blowing up railways and delivering a clean, killing blow, the mystic she knew he also was seemed very distant.

They climbed a rise and Susan took a moment to enjoy the crisp greens, browns and blues of Loch Morar. A relative of the Loch Ness monster purportedly lived in the lake. She wondered if Eustace would find his way here in his never ending search for dragons and sea monsters.

Major al-Masri continued briskly walking down the hill. She hurried to catch up with him, easily jumping over rocks, keeping her footing sure, enjoying how even after four miles, she felt no discomfort at all. She was fitter even than she had been in Narnia.

"How is Peter?" she asked. Her letters were so heavily censored it was almost pointless to write and Peter was a terrible correspondent.

"Bored," the Major replied. "Which is regrettably the life of light infantry training."

Susan's own training had certainly not been dull. "I wish he would have joined us here. Or done something else. It seems to be such a waste."

"I disagree, Mrs. Caspian. Peter is training hard and well with a very good CO."

"There are good COs here!" she retorted, automatically rising to the defence of the SOE.

"Yes," he said and then offered an unsatisfying qualifier. "Some are good. Most are talented amateurs, learning as they go."

"And you are among the good ones, of course?" Susan would be less irritated if he acted a trifle less assured.

"I am a professional," Major al-Masri replied. He glanced at her, stepped lightly over a rivulet, and kept his footing on the loose rocks. "You are not yet a professional, Mrs. Caspian, but you are very, very good. Nevertheless, I shall have to reassess my opinion of your formidable acumen if you have not seen the problems in the SOE."

She wanted to bristle at the blunt critiques of both her and the SOE, but in fairness could not. The skills of Narnia were useful, but did not perfectly translate to the life of a spy in occupied France. She had needed to learn so very much and still was. The Nazis were more formidable than any foe faced before.

And the multiple crises within the SOE had been terrible indeed. Even out here, alone with the birds and the wind, she whispered, "You are speaking of the Prosper disaster?" Dozens of agents and hundreds of informants in France had been rounded up that summer and never heard from again and an enormous and productive network had been completely blown.

"Not just that, Mrs. Caspian." She edged closer so that they could talk more quietly even on the lonely Highlands path. Once upon a time she would have spoken so with Rats and Crows, with Edmund, and with her loyal Guard, the he-Wolf, Lambert.

"Something worse that Prosper?" she asked.

"More a concern of what gave rise to the Prosper disaster and that nothing will be done to prevent it again." The wind blew a chill and they both picked up their pace. There was still the task with the deer herd to come.

"Recall that the SOE was formed by secret order. It is accountable to no one. They are brilliant but they are also naïve and they frequently operate, as much of the British intelligence community does, under the regrettable assumption that men of a certain breeding and education are, by virtue of that breeding and education, loyal and competent."

It was a testament to her trust in him that she did not doubt Major al-Masri's words. How could she when she had observed these same failings. The full implications were chilling. Did Major al-Masri suspect there were double agents in their ranks? Was someone betraying them deliberately? Or was what had led to the deaths of hundreds of people merely criminal errors in judgment and rank stupidity? They had both observed phenomenal carelessness at times.

"You are being unusually blunt, Major. Thank you."

He glanced around. Their walk disturbed some wading birds who had been picking through the damp heath. It was otherwise silent and lonely. The farmers and fishermen never said a word about the strange people who had occupied the hunting lodges of Inverness-shire and galloped about shooting things and blowing things up.

"Do not make the same mistakes your instructors and fellows make. Never underestimate your foe, Mrs. Caspian. And do not over-estimate your allies. You will die if you do so."

Her pique rose again as he picked at a particular tender spot of hers. "I do not need protection!"

"No you do not," he agreed. "I am offering counsel, not protection. You are wise enough to know the difference."

She kicked a gray rock and it skittered down the slope into the Loch. They were almost to the cottage. "Yes," she agreed with a sigh. "I do know the difference and I apologize for jumping to that conclusion. Knowing how great the need is, my frustration and impatience get the better of me at times."

Another person would put a comforting hand about her shoulders. Susan had learned that Major al-Masri never touched a woman.

"Mrs. Caspian, waiting on the French situation to stabilise is a sound decision. If you went now, it would be as a radio operator, whose average life expectancy is currently about 6 weeks. I would expect you to do better, but I am reluctant to see you thrown in as yet more fodder. You need more time to perfect your French cover and there will be plenty to do there in 1944."

They began the descent into the dell with the deer paddock. "Colonel Walker-Smythe had told me two years ago that I should look to 1944. It seems even farther now than it did then." Susan hoped she did not sound too petulant.

"There is something coming for you, Mrs. Caspian. I cannot quite see it, yet, but I am looking for it on your behalf. Whatever it is will be important and a challenge and involve more than avoiding Gestapo signal vans searching for illegal wireless broadcasts."

As they approached the pen, the skittish deer shied. They did associate humans with food. From a tin bin at the gate, Major al-Masri scooped out handfuls of corn and tossed it into the pen. Hunger overcame fear and the deer came closer to the fence and began to nibble on the strewn kernels.

She wished she could have brought one of the bows. The Lil' Joe would have been perfect for this. But that was not the point of this exercise.

Major al-Masri moved to the side and Susan stepped up and studied the herd. She heard Lambert's voice; her Narnian Wolf-Guard had had a beautiful voice. They had often hunted together.

"Do you see it, my Queen?" Lambert would whisper as they crouched together in the concealing brush.

She would watch how he tracked the deer in a herd until he found one – the weak one, the old, the ill, the young, the vulnerable. It had taken years for her to learn to see as the Wolves did.

 _There. That one._ The doe's nose was running and her sides were sunk in. The eye of this doe was not clear and bright and her head drooped.

Susan's only regret was that Lambert was not now at her side. Without him to pinion a struggling deer, she would have to be careful of thrashing hooves.

She slid her long, thin, strong knife out of the sheath belted to her waist. Susan climbed through the fence, scooped up a little of the spilled corn from the ground, and walked slowly across the paddock to the little deer. If she could do this on horseback from yards away with an arrow, she could do this when standing right next to her prey.

She slowly approached the deer, palm extended. The doe lifted her head and her nose quivered. Tentative, she stretched her neck, red rimmed nostrils flaring. Susan remained still and the deer took two steps forward. The doe's soft lips delicately tickled against Susan's skin as she slowly mouthed the corn in her hand.

The corn trickled to the ground and the doe lowered her head to eat. Susan hefted the knife and gripped it in both hands. The hide was tough and she could not afford to catch the blade on bone.

_Daughter, I send you to Aslan. Greet him for me._

She plunged the knife into the doe, between shoulder and upper leg, avoiding the rib she could see under the deer's rough hide. The doe jerked and flailed so hard Susan nearly lost her footing. The deer bolted, taking the knife thrust into her side with her. Susan let her go.

The rest of the herd startled and tore about the paddock. Susan edged to the rail to avoid the thrashing hooves.

For a moment she lost the doe in the crush of panicked deer. It would not matter. There was nowhere for her to run and she'd felt the sureness of the cut when she'd pierced the hide and sinew. Susan had hit the largest part of the lungs and cut the top of the heart.

The doe suddenly teetered and crumbled to the ground, dead.

Susan waited until the herd settled before crossing the paddock to the dead doe. She hated death. The doe had fallen on the knife, so Susan had to turn her over to pull it out, boot on the carcass, two hands on the blade.

She returned to where Major al-Masri waited and climbed out of the paddock. She wiped the knife on the brown tipped grass.

"Well?" she asked, knowing she had done very well. She returned the knife to her sheath.

Major al-Masri glanced at the dead doe, whose life's blood now was spreading on the ground. A crew would come later and butcher the carcass and share the meat with the local townsfolk.

"Mrs. Caspian, I will state in my report that I believe you will be capable of killing a human being, should the circumstances warrant. I will leave out of my report that you have obviously killed before."

"A deer or a human being?" In her opinion, the exercise was foolish. There was all the difference in the world between killing a dumb animal for food and killing a human to save your own life. Susan knew the difference and so did Major al-Masri.

"We know the answer to that query already, Mrs. Caspian, and the more ambiguous I am, the better."

* * *

Arisaig House, Arisaig, Inverness-shire, Guerrilla Training

Subject: Notes by instructors and staff regarding student Mrs. Susan Caspian

Student handled the deer kill coolly and professionally. She had studied deer anatomy, selected a target, and made a swift, clean, and humane kill. I observed no nerves or sentiment.

I have known and observed student over the prior year. Student is very well suited to covert and sabotage work. Student is gifted in stealth and explosives with a very steady head and hand. She is nerveless and very creative. Student exhibited no difficulty at all working with gammon bombs, 808s, and plastic explosives. Pity her target. She's very patient and waits for the right moment, trusts her intuition, and acts decisively. As with the deer kill, she is as a wolf among sheep – once she selects her prey, she seldom misses a mark.

* * *

Met the student for the first time during field exercises. Though a woman, student has definitely got a sense of strategy. Her plans are usually conservative, not bold or brilliant, and never reckless. Student is very good at studying a challenge, developing a plan, delegating the tasks, seizing the opportunity, and seeing it done. I'd expect her to be the sort of woman who gets lost in the details but she doesn't. Student always grasps the goal and then is very focused on the strategy to accomplish it. Doesn't get distracted by the little things.

Discussed student's insistence upon perfection. Asked her if this meant she would only try what she knew she could do well and if fear of failure was holding her back. That brought her up. Student is not, by nature, a risk taker. She's decisive and steady, but she wants luxury of good planning and shows of overwhelming force. Between that and the dislike of guns, not sure she's suited for insertion into the armed resistance groups. No matter. She's terrific for network building, courier, surveillance, espionage, and sabotage.

* * *

Student is very keen on Ringway for parachute training. Recommend she proceed.

* * *

RAF Ringway, Cheshire  
Subject: Notes by instructors and staff regarding student Mrs. Susan Caspian

 

Student is maybe too eager to jump out of airplanes. Showed great pluck and verve. Good head for heights. Very encouraging of other students. Sprained her ankle on 1st jump when someone got in her way on landing. She shook it off like a man. Never put a wrong step again.

Student is eager for finishing school and w/t training. Recommend her for both.

* * *

Peter took another deep gulp of the putrid air, glanced at his watch and then fixed his eyes on the hollow strut above the pale, whitish, green face of Corporal Bailey.

"Ten minutes to cast off," their pilot called. How they managed to fly these things was miraculous.

Ten minutes. He could do ten…. And then everything gave another wild lurch.

Peter pressed his back to the hull, bracing himself as the little glider surged and bucked. He had thought that being in the glider corps, in an actual glider, would be most akin to flying with the Gryphons.

Never had Peter been so very, very wrong. Gliders had no more engines than did a paper airplane. That was fine; neither did a Gryphon. Gliders, unlike Gryphons, had no means of independent propulsion. They were tethered to a big bomber and towed aloft, like a balloon pulled by a motor car. Once the glider cast off from the bomber, it was everything he'd hoped it would be – freed of the tow cable, they were alone, in the sky, gliding silently on currents and thermals.

Until that glorious moment, though, glider-borne was worse than a boat, or anything else for that matter.

When tied to the bomber, the glider pitched, yawed, heaved and bucked and, eventually, so would your stomach. The little, Yank-made Wacos didn't help either – they were small, unstable, and flimsy. Pull on something too hard and you worried the whole thing would come apart.

Still, having traveled in enough odd contraptions through his (first, Narnian) adulthood, Peter had assumed he was pretty well immune to motion sickness. He'd been wrong about that, too. If the whipsawing motion inside the Waco didn't get him, the vomiting of the others could. Thirty minutes into a training flight and the deck of the Waco would be awash in the vomit of the ten members of the platoon trapped inside.

But the High King of Narnia not only had personally experienced all manner of unorthodox, sickness-inducing transport, he had become pretty well inured to strong smells that would turn any less-hardened stomach. He was an expert in the odours of mammals and birds, dwarfs, and Fauns. He knew what they all smelled like when wet, filthy, diseased, or bloody, and could distinguish a goat from a Satyr to avoid an embarrassing mistake in the dark. He knew the stench of bloated and rotting corpses on blistering hot battlefields, the stink of Giants, the reek of the slums from the great city of Tashbaan, and the eye-watering fumes of stewing offal meats from the Cair Paravel kitchen.

He was, quietly, proud that he'd retched on only four of the last eleven training flights. That was seven better than his CO. Major Mad Bastard Howard had gotten sick every time they went aloft in the Waco. Hearing the telltale sounds, Peter quickly looked fore, up the bench toward the cockpit, and saw Major Howard bent over. Peter fixed his eye at the porthole window and watched the clouds sailing by.

Some interminable length of time passed that was only another seven minutes, during which Brotheridge and Gray also got sick. Finally, there was a snap and shudder, and the drone of the engines of the Halifax that was towing them fell away. They'd cast off. The motions wouldn't be the problem now. Just the fetid odours.

The navigator was calling out altitude as they slowly descended in lazy circles toward the runway.

"Bailey! Pevensie!" Lieutenant Brotheridge barked, sounding hoarse, Bailey squeezed aft, careful to avoid slipping on vomit, and took his position for releasing the parachute that would slow their landing speed. Peter stood, bracing himself against a strut. As he put a hand on the door handle, he felt Parr firmly grab on to the back of his belt with one hand; Parr would be holding on to a strut with the other hand.

The ground of the base's runway was coming up fast and then the order came from Major Howard who was watching their elevation, "Open the door!"

Peter grabbed the lever, yanked hard, and the door to the glider's cabin slid up, letting in a burst of cooler air that took out the stench. Peter got the hatch opening job a lot, for he was taller than most and had a good head for heights. The greens and browns of the base's runway whipped by below them. Parr tightened his grip on Peter's belt and hauled him back into the cabin, away from the open hatch. They were still airborne and the deck was slippery.

"Link arms! Boots up!" Major Howard ordered. They all sat quickly on the benches, linked arms and lifted their feet. Peter didn't like thinking about what was on the sole of the boots. Here they were landing on a smooth runway, but in a combat situation the glider would land wherever it could and the bottom could easily be torn away. Boots up meant their feet wouldn't go when the deck did.

They skidded on to the tarmac and there was another hard lurch. Bailey deployed the parachute from the rear of the glider. The Waco shuddered and bounced about, slowing on her skids.

They were still lurching down the runway when Major Howard started shouting, "Out! Out! Out!"

Parr took up the Major's favourite refrain and they all joined in and chanted, "Rats in a trap, rats in a trap!" They scrambled out of the cabin as fast as they could. Gray was the first one out and the moment his boots touched ground, the air erupted with the sounds of crackers; a thunder-flash went off a few yards away. Observers were shooting blank rounds at them. Peter wished he could say it felt like a real risk, but it didn't. Peter, right behind Brotheridge and Bailey, jumped onto the runway; his boots hit the ground with a crunch. Crouching under the wing, Peter ran from the glider and dove off the runway into the ditch that ran alongside it. Feet hitting gravel and the good smell of clean dirt and grass cleared his head and stomach.

A deck slippery with vomit was just one reason to prang out of the glider as fast as your legs could get you. The other was that they were trapped and defenseless so long as they were inside the glider. Major Howard called them rats in a trap, but Peter though proverbial fish in a barrel was even more apt. Except that a barrel was a lot sturdier than the plywood glider.

"Damn flashy schoolboy," Parr muttered, landing next to him in the ditch. "You won the pool, didn't you? You beat the spread?"

"Four to twelve," Peter affirmed, referring to the number of times he and Major Howard had each lost breakfast in glider training,. "Twenty shillings and nine cigarettes." They both anchored their guns loaded with blanks in the dirt and peered out over the edge of the ditch, sighting for enemy that wasn't there. _Soon_ , he told himself. _Soon_.

* * *

Beaulieu Finishing School, Hampshire  
Subject: Notes by instructors and staff regarding student Susan Caspian

 

Student has shown remarkable progress in language. Her errors are few and she never makes the same mistake twice.

Student exhibits a notable stubborn streak. She is very security conscious, very focused on following protocols, so long as she agrees with them.

Student has excellent tradecraft skills. Very observant, good memory, very focused upon details. Student has a very logical mind for a woman, as good as a man at measurements and sums.

Student is utterly committed to the cause. She speaks with great emotion against Nazism and the murder of Jews. I had asked student if she had friends or family in the occupied countries and if that was the reason for her passion. Student gave me a cool look and said that with one million dead she didn't need to have a personal relationship to care about their fate. Did I?

Student does not guard her tongue when provoked. An instructor made a crude joke about Jews and student gave him a royal tongue lashing. Other team members speak of never saying anything bad in her presence about coloured people. Can get a rise out of her with anti-British sentiment, too, especially Indian politics. Took her aside and discussed with her that she's being deliberately provoked and this sort of thing will give her away. If she wants to go to France, she needs to learn to stay out of the damnable internecine politics. She doesn't like being corrected, but accepted it.

Oddest thing. Caught student writing in cipher during lecture on tradecraft. Hauled her up and asked her to explain. It's not shorthand but a private code she says she developed with her brothers and sister when she was a child. Couldn't make heads or tails of it but she read from it easy as anything and repeated back the lecture. Sent her over to pianists to see if they could make use of any of it.

She is very friendly with the other students on her team, and very supportive. She remembers every birthday, always asks about health and family. She knows all the staff; chats easily with anyone regardless of station or class. Very popular, very kind. But no one knows when her birthday is. It's subtle – everything about this student is subtle – but she never talks about herself. She holds herself a little aloof. She never confides.

Student can hold a grudge. She gives a masterful performance of forgiveness, but you can see her continuing resentment at the wrongdoer in a set of her jaw and the cool aside. It's not nice, but if our agents were more cautious and less forgiving, maybe we wouldn't have blown so many networks and seen so many dead and disappeared. I told her to change that anger, which at first she denied having, to suspicion. In the field, if someone does something she doesn't like, there might be a reason for it that leads straight to the Gestapo.

Caught student teaching others how to pick locks to the liquor cabinet and kitchens. She's got a lockpick set; says she bought it from a jeweler off Baker Street. I confiscated it to see what she would do. She broke into my office and stole it back two nights later. Our cracksman is besotted with her. Also says that her pick set is professional grade which means she got it from another professional. Don't know what to make of it.

Student speaks with great fondness for her brothers and sister and writes to them frequently. She never speaks of her husband. I finally asked if there was trouble there and she was genuinely surprised and assured me there was not. It's none of my business, of course, but we want to be sure she is not coming to us for the wrong reasons. She does not appear fatalistic at all so I can't get a bead on her.

Student has many male admirers. She's very good at giving clear expectation politely. If she's taken a lover, it's discreet. Can manage men and would probably be excellent as a keeper of a safehouse.

Turns out student is intimate with one of the w/t instructors, WC Tebbitt. Been going on for weeks apparently and they only got caught because of a bomb drill. They worked together previously in America in '42 which explains a lot. Probably the reason student is not concerned overly with her husband.

Rumours finally caught up with student. Realise who she is. Everyone knows she was running agents two years ago in America, coshed a spy with a flower pot at the British Embassy, and burglared the Vice President's valise. Student doesn't discuss it, but everyone knows. Why is she not deployed already? Is there something wrong? She's getting bored and frustrated. It's a damnable waste.

* * *

To follow, Chapter 3, Agent Provocateur

The only people who aren't real in this chapter are Peter, Susan, and Major al-Masri. The exploits of D Company's training are all taken directly from books by Stephen Ambrose and Will Fowler. D Company did march across the Somerset levels, with Corporal Wally Parr and Corporal Jack Bailey pretending they'd marched their feet clean off and there was a bet regarding whether Major Howard would wear the brass off his walking stick (he did). The NAAFI is the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes who operate the canteen, shops, laundry and recreational services for the non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and regular officers (ROs) (or enlisted men) on British bases. Parr, Private Billy Gray and a third, unnamed soldier really did break into the NAAFI and spread soap around and Major "Mad Bastard" Howard routinely got sick on glider missions. At this point, D Company is made of four platoons, each headed up by a Lieutenant. Peter is in Lieutenant Brotheridge's platoon. Captain Priday is Howard's SIC or 2IC (second in command) and Gray is Brotheridge's "batman" - the enlisted man who performs small services for his officer. Think Sam to Frodo, Bunter to Lord Peter, and Jeeves to Wooster.

The paternalistic, sexist quality to the reports about Susan are true to the period. The SOE instructors' written assessments of the women agents-in-training survive and are quoted extensively in my source material. The creation of the deer kill is original. The discussion between Susan and Major al-Masri about the massive security problems within the SOE and the destruction of the Prosper network (Francis Suttill) is all available with an easy internet search.


	3. Agent Provocateur, D-Day Minus 6 Months

****

00OO00  
Beaulieu Finishing School  
Hampshire

ooOOoo

Her warm breath was frosty in the gray morning chill. With a weary exhale, a cloud of frost enveloped her. Susan jogged through it.

She had already gone 10 kilometres, give or take, on her morning run, a leisurely pace, no nausea, and no stitch in her side. _Mais bien sûr!_

Might as well go for another 3 kilometres around the lake.

Susan thought in kilometres now. _This is conditioning,_ she told herself. Not boredom. Preparation. This was how she would be able to slip into France unnoticed. The French economy had collapsed. There was very little food. The women Bods -agents- in France were rail thin and with no petrol and only charcoal or wood burning cars, they cycled everywhere. Forty kilometres a day by bicycle was not uncommon at all. She would go to the gymnasium and work with the barbells after the jog. Susan Caspian was known to be strong in body and in spirit and she would work to maintain it – not like those weak, willowy girls who could barely handle a parachute. When the opportunity came, by Aslan, there would be no reason not to send her.

Except there always was. Susan knew she was as talented as the dozens of men and women who had passed through Beaulieu on this final step in their training before insertion into war zones, belligerents, and occupied countries. Everyone else came, learned, received their assignment, and went on. She stayed behind. The year had turned, the second front was coming, and she was still in England.

She jogged down the avenue of barren trees, careful to avoid the occasional icy patch. No turned ankles. No sprains. She startled some deer who bounded off into the fog. A few birds wintering in the New Forest heathland fluttered about. She heard a call, a warbler, she thought.

She rounded the bend and the house – there were several on the grounds all given over to the SOE – came into view.

Tebbitt was slouching against a gnarled oak tree on the drive. She pulled up, breathing hard, but nothing close to winded.

"Morning, cuz," he drawled. "You're out earlier than usual."

He would, of course, know when she had risen that morning. Susan thought of objecting to his insistence upon calling her _cuz_ even though that was two cover stories ago, but had other means of revenge.

"Bonjour!"

She reached for the canteen in his hands, but he held it back. "English please, Mrs. Caspian."

"It is supposed to be French only," she replied, taking the canteen. The water was flat and metallic. She rinsed and spit into the bushes; the next mouthful she swallowed.

"It is," he said, exchanging canteen for a rough towel. "I worry, though, that your proficiency in French is so great, when you start sending messages back to me over the wireless, I won't understand you."

Susan mopped her face and her glum mood deepened. "No risk of that, Tebbitt, as I'll be here until the end of the War." He, at least, had a purpose here, training others in the art of listening well, remembering what you heard, photography, w/t, and ciphers. Tebbitt had the hands of a musician, the soul of a poet, and was among the fastest Morse code senders in the SOE. _His_ skills were all highly prized.

It was a fit of pique but Susan threw the towel around her neck and started to jog up to the house. With his bad back, Tebbitt wouldn't be able to keep up.

"Actually, no you won't be, Mrs. C," Tebbitt called out.

Susan turned back around, confused. "What?"

"You won't be here until the War ends," he said casually, still slumped against the tree, screwing the lid back on the canteen.

She jogged back to him, put fingers to his chin and brought his eyes to meet hers. "Say again?"

He grinned, cocksure and smug. "Your orders have come through, Mrs. C. We're due at the Mad House on the Salisbury plain."

She took a step closer. Yes, she was an unladylike mess, but Tebbitt never minded that. At least there was no mud. "Mad House?" Susan repeated, laying a hand on his chest. Tebbitt could be quite irresistible and, bearing good news, was even more so than the usual.

"HQ for the 6th Airborne. Codenamed Broadmoor."

Odd. Peter was with the 6th, in the Glider Corps, D Company of the Ox & Bucks.

"Is this it?" she whispered, not even daring to hope. "Finally?"

"I think so, Mrs. C."

Susan pushed him into the cover of the wood out of sight of the prying eyes of the house. He drew his hands up to her hips and the canteen banged a little against her thigh. With Tebbitt backed up against the tree, she kissed him.

00oo00

As she and Tebbitt motored into the guarded gates of Brigmerston House, Susan wondered if she might manage a visit to Peter. He was stationed at Bulford base, and only a few kilometres away.

Brigmerston House was codenamed Broadmoor after the asylum, which could not signify anything positive for 6th Airborne's HQ. It was an old, shambling place. The SOE was, the saying went, codename for _stately 'omes of England,_ but all the services had taken their share of crumbling estates. The outward security of Broadmoor was impressive. The grounds were surrounded by barbed wire, guards and dogs patrolled the perimeter. Her and Tebbitt's credentials were checked and rechecked and they and their motorbikes searched.

Everyone looked very preoccupied.

Security was becoming tiresome and Tebbitt irritated when Major al-Masri appeared at the security checkpoint to get them across the no man's land of the drive into the front door of the house.

"They are expected," al-Masri told the officious guard.

"It is good to see you again, Major," Tebbitt said, stuffing his driving gloves in his coat pocket and shaking al-Masri's hand.

"Welcome, Wing Commander." He extended a hand to her. "Mrs. Caspian, a pleasure as always. How are you?"

"Bien, et vous?"

"English, please, Mrs. Caspian," Tebbitt complained.

"I am well, and thank you both for coming," Major al-Masri replied. "Further pleasantries should wait until we are inside. If you will follow me?"

She had not seen Major al-Masri in the months since she left guerilla training in Inverness-shire. They had exchanged a few letters. Major al-Masri always seemed to know when she was feeling discouraged and his advice would always find her. She assumed that he was in frequent contact with Tebbitt and Colonel Walker-Smythe. He'd promised her the right assignment would come. _Was this finally it?_

Major al-Masri escorted them into the crumbling house. There were phones ringing and Susan heard the clack of the telex behind a door that had probably once been a cloakroom. People rushed to and fro. General Gale was the commander of the 6th and she wondered where his offices were. Tebbitt had to duck to keep from smashing his head on the low, splintering overhead beams.

It was all so typical of being with men. Over 60 kilometres by motorbike and no one asked if she wanted to use a washroom or comb her hair after having it squashed under a helmet. It wasn't that a lady wore lipstick on a motorbike – debris would stick to your lips – but a Waaf would have at least asked.

The Major led them down a hall into what had once been a dining room, judging from the décor, now obliterated by maps and photographs papering the walls. Two Waafs and an Airborne private were pushing pins into maps. It was still full daylight, but the blackout shades were drawn tightly. The three saluted the Major and Tebbitt. And…

"Colonel!" Tebbitt cried. "This is a surprise!"

Susan hurried into the room with Tebbitt and offered her hand to Colonel Walker-Smythe.

"Tebbitt! Mrs. Caspian! Wonderful to see you both!"

Colonel Walker-Smythe and Edmund had returned to England from America just after Christmas but she had not seen her first mentor since entering the SOE. "What brings you here, Sir?" Susan asked.

"I've been shuttling about," the Colonel said. He gestured at the wall maps of England, France and Belgium. "My current posting is liaison with the FUSAG, the US First Army Group, based in Dover."

"Leave us, please, and shut the door," al-Masri said to the other staff, and the Waafs and the private scurried out. They all waited until they heard three sets of footsteps moving away from the door, then the Major added, "Please, make yourselves comfortable, as we will be here for some time. I will have someone bring us tea later."

She and Tebbitt shrugged out of their jackets and put the helmets on the sideboard. They joined al-Masri and Colonel Walker-Smythe at a wall map of the French coast that covered the width of the spacious room.

"Should we exchange more pleasantries, or shall I get right to the briefing?" al-Masri asked, sounding very arch.

"Briefing, _please,"_ Susan said.

"As you insist." Major al-Masri turned and faced the map. "With all attention now focused upon the second front, I've been temporarily assigned here to help coordinate certain intelligence activities. A need has developed and I recommended Mrs. Caspian for it to General Gale."

"Which I heartily seconded when Windy Gale asked me about it," Colonel Walker-Smythe said. He was looking very pleased and in high spirits; he wasn't even chewing on his cigar though it was still in his breast pocket. Susan felt a surge of affection for both Major al-Masri and Colonel Walker-Smythe.

"Thank you, Major, Colonel. Please continue." It was an effort to curb her impatience.

"I need hardly tell you how secret this is, but shall emphasize it nonetheless," Major al-Masri said. "All materials are officially bigoted. I would have come to Beaulieu to brief you, but this information is not permitted off the Broadmoor premises. You must conduct your review here. You will not be permitted to take notes with you and I will personally inspect your belongings when you do leave. I will try to brief you as well as possible without telling you more than you need to know."

Thinking this already sounded unusual, Susan glanced at Tebbitt. He returned her silent question with a subtle gesture in their private code. Y _es,_ Tebbitt was agreeing. _You are right and this is strange._

al-Masri gestured to the map of the coast of France. "The second front will open, soon, within the next six months. "

"At Calais?" Tebbitt asked.

"Pas-de-Calais is the shortest distance between France and England," Colonel Walker-Smythe replied. "FUSAG is stationed at Dover, directly across the channel. Those operations are not, however, your concern. Mrs. Caspian, you will be deployed elsewhere."

Major al-Masri nodded. "Precisely. For your purposes, Mrs. Caspian, we find it necessary to insert an agent here." He gestured to a map on the wall of the Calvados region and pointed to the city of Caen. "The Resistance is active and has been very successful in Caen."

 _"Réseau Centurie,"_ she said, then corrected herself for Tebbitt. "The Century network." Century was part of the _Organisation Civil et Militaire_ in northern France.

"They've done brilliant work. Provided a lot of our intelligence regarding the Atlantic Wall," Tebbitt added. He ran his fingers around the pins designating the Nazi fortifications intended to prevent any Allied amphibious landing. The Atlantic Wall extended over 5,000 kilometres, all along the French coast, from Spain to Belgium and through occupied Europe, all the way to the North Sea.

"Among other things, yes," al-Masri said. "Recent arrests have made the work more difficult…"

"Again," Tebbitt added. He tended to interrupt when he was enthusiastic.

Susan nudged him and al-Masri continued.

"Still, Centurie continues to provide important intelligence for the whole region."

Colonel Walker-Smythe picked up the story, circling an area on the map with a pointer. "Caen is about 17 kilometres inland from the Normandy coast." He drew a line north from Caen. "Here, between Caen and the beaches, are the towns of Ranville on the east and the town of Bénouville on the west. Between them are two bridges, one on the Orne River and the other on the Caen Canal. A garrison is stationed there at the Canal Bridge."

"Most of Rommel's tanks are east of there, aren't they?" Tebbitt asked, studying the map. "Prepared for an invasion at Calais?"

"Yes," Colonel Walker-Smythe said. "The Nazis are very wary of General Patton and are prepared for when he'll bring FUSAG and the rest of the Allied force across the channel."

"However, Caen is not unprotected," al-Masri said. "The 352nd Infantry is in the area, nine battalions strong, and ultimately under Rommel's command. Many are veterans of the Eastern Front." al-Masri paused and when he spoke again, he sounded almost fond, in a way some of the veterans of the North Africa see-saw fighting did. "I have great respect for them and so should you."

al-Masri gestured to a series of photographs. "Again, I draw your attention to the bridges. On the west bank is the Gondrée Café, operated by Georges Gondrée and his wife, Therèsé. They are both members of the Resistance. He speaks English and she speaks German. They report everything observed about the condition of those bridges and the garrison guarding them to Madame Léa Vion, the Director of Château de Bénouville, currently a maternity hospital and a hub for the Centurie network outside of Caen. The hospital is less than 2 kilometres away from the Café. Madame Vion has been a very successful agent for the last four years."

"And in this established network, what is my role, Major?" Susan asked. Did they need help with building and recruitment after the arrests? A new pianist – radio operator? The network had its roots in professional organizations, public works, and the _bourgeoisie_ of northern France. So, perhaps military training or demolishing the bridges? But this was a large and very active intelligence gathering network. Surely the local resistance could manage blowing up two bridges?

When Major al-Masri spoke, there was added gravity. "I cannot overstate how critically important it is to obtain accurate intelligence about these two bridges. We need to know everything about them – the capability of the garrison protecting them, any counter-measures, the movements of troops in the area, anything. Everything."

From a pile of papers on the walnut dining room table, Major al-Masri handed her a thick file. "This is your briefing material. You will remain here at Broadmoor. You will fly out of RAF Tangmere by Lysander on the first clear night at the next moon period, which will begin in ten days. You will proceed directly to Château de Bénouville and aid the Gondrées and Madame Vion in their surveillance of the bridges."

A year of training and now, as was the way of it, Susan had ten days to master her cover. They discussed details, but only to a point. This was true Rat and Crow – espionage, not sabotage. Information had been going to Paris but now there were regular pick-ups and deliveries by Lysander during the moon periods so the intelligence would be in the form of reports and photographs primarily, not wireless. There was an impressive collection of photo reconnaissance, which meant that the RAF was already conducting surveillance.

And then she was excused. Colonel Walker-Smythe escorted her to a small, out of the way office with a cot, a desk, and a chair. She was shown where the washroom was. It, fortunately, had indoor plumbing. Susan was determined to enjoy it while she could.

"It is good to see you again, Sir," she told the Colonel, setting her file on the desk and her motorbike helmet on a ledge.

"I have been keeping part of an eye on you, Mrs. Caspian, and Tebbitt and al-Masri have been fulsome in their praise. I was very pleased to recommend you to General Gale."

"Thank you, Sir."

"I know you've not been able to see Edmund since we returned from Washington. It was a pleasure to work with him. His future is as promising as yours."

Since she'd not been able to see Edmund, Susan had no idea what her brother had been up to – all their letters had been closely reviewed and even the most innocuous of things censored. With her focus on insertion into France, it wasn't a boundary Susan had wanted to test, either. Edmund had similarly chafed under the restrictions but acquiesced in them as she had.

"Again, my thanks, Sir, for your sponsorship, for both of us."

"My trust has been well-rewarded.  But please do not wander about unescorted, Mrs. Caspian. You are a small part of a much bigger effort and what we chose to tell you must satisfy you."

He teased his cigar out of his pocket and began fiddling with it between his fingers.

"If you are apprehended – by the Gestapo, the Milice, or the Abwehr – the only thing you will be able to reveal is that bridges are important and this the Nazis already know. Do you understand me?"

"If interrogated, I can only reveal what I know," Susan replied.

"And there is a great deal that can be learned here at Broadmoor, Mrs. Caspian. For your safety and that of the operation, please curb your natural curiosity and your past tendency to confide in others."

He was being protective of the mission, a little paternalistic for her well-being, and reminding her of how he had caught her two years ago passing secret intelligence in Narnian code to Edmund.

"Yes, Colonel, I understand," Susan replied firmly.

"I hope you do not," he replied. "Not fully, because if you do, that could be very bad for the Allies. And for you." The Colonel glanced around and, unexpectedly, pushed the door to the busy corridor shut.

"And now, since we were in Washington together, can we be American for just a moment? May I give you a hug, as an old man to a young woman he is very proud of?"

For answer, Susan smiled and stepped into his arms, enjoying a father's loving embrace she had not felt in years.

"Thank you, for the opportunity and your support."

The Colonel patted her back and kissed the top of her head. "I gave you the chance, Susan, but this has all been your work."

And that was quite enough sentiment for them. Colonel Walker-Smythe pulled away and clamped the cigar between his teeth, just where it should be. How he was able to talk around cigar and bushy mustache was miraculous.

"I hope I don't disappoint you, Sir."

"You won't, Mrs. Caspian. Get to work. We'll fill Tebbitt in. If you need anything, make note of it and we'll see to it. Don't go poking around looking for it."

The Colonel opened the door and left, shutting the door behind him. She was alone in the cubicle with her files and a tea tray.

Susan brushed the tangles out of her hair, hung up her jacket, sat at the rickety desk, and began to read about two villages in France, separated by a river, a canal, and two bridges, the garrison of Nazis that protected them, and the French who watched them.

Tebbitt appeared several hours later carrying a proper supper on a tray, if cheese and beetroot sandwiches could be so characterized.

"Well?" she asked, joining him on the cot to eat.

"It's big. Enormous. It's important, better than what all but a few have gotten. You'll be brilliant." He gulped down a sandwich and picked up another. It was a spy's way – eat while you can, because you never knew when you would again. "Madame Vion will be bringing you on as an assistant and secretary and you'll work at the maternity hospital. In anticipation of getting someone from here, she's been telling people that her niece from Le Mans is coming to help her."

Susan flexed her fingers. She had done little typing and office work since Washington. "With a garrison right there, I imagine there are mothers with babies at the hospital." _Collaboration horizontale._

"Atkins is sending someone to Beaulieu to gather your things, go through them, make sure it all passes muster. I'm driving back there now and will see to all that. Before I go, we'll settle on your cover and working names and they'll get the papers started. The Caen network has very good forgers, so Madame Vion may want you to use their shoemaker once you arrive. Since we are sliding you into her operation, she'll have final say. If Vion doesn't like what she sees, she'll chuck you in the Channel."

"Formidable," Susan said. Just based upon her review of the woman's file thus far, she had a towering respect for her. "And the operation? Can you tell me more?"

"No," Tebbitt responded flatly.

"Did Major al-Masri and Colonel Walker-Smythe give you a fuller briefing?"

"It's mostly al-Masri's show," Tebbitt said. "The Colonel was here meeting with General Gale and to see us. He'll be going back to Dover to continue with FUSAG and the Calais plans."

Tebbitt trailed off to a silence that felt very awkward. After a year of sharing everything, he now had to decide how much to tell her. It was odd. He stalled and took listless bites from his sandwich.

"I forgot to ask the Colonel. Has there been any word on Lowrey?"

She and Tebbitt had both liked Captain David Lowrey so much when they'd worked with him in Washington. Lowrey had joined the Dieppe Raid and had managed to survive the debacle but was among the thousands of Canadians who were now POWs in German camps.

"I did ask and unfortunately, no." Tebbitt shook his head. "Not since last year, Christmas, after the Red Cross had gotten word that he was in the camp in occupied Poland."

They both startled at the sound of a crack outside that a moment later registered as a lorry backfiring and not gunshot.

"The camps are terrible," Tebbitt said, stating soberly what they both knew. "We may not know until the war ends, and maybe not even then. At least he was in uniform."

Susan nodded and there was nothing more that could be said about it. Uniformed soldiers might be afforded protections as combatants; spies were executed.

He swallowed the last of the sandwich and gulped down the cold tea left in her cup. "Did you notice that al-Masri didn't even mention risks to the Century network? Madame Vion has been smuggling out downed Allied fliers, running guns, managing cash, and reporting to the network in Caen. If you are captured and interrogated, you could blow the whole operation and he said nothing of it."

Susan considered al-Masri's omission. There had been massive arrests, whole networks had been blown. They were sending agents as fast as they could to assess the damage and try to rebuild. "We know what happened in Le Havre and with the Prosper network last summer." And so many others. Thousands had disappeared. "What are you saying, Tebbitt?"

"Think about it, Susan. al-Masri won't say it, but they don't care that you know about the blown networks or that you would be able to blow Century. They are willing to sacrifice everything to preserve the overall operation."

He let her absorb that callous calculation and then added, "And I believe that to be strategically sound."

"Two small bridges? Are they that important?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to tell me anything more about why or are you going to send me in blind?"

"You won't be blind, Mrs. C, but you won't know the bigger, strategic objectives of why this is important. You aren't going to know where. You aren't going to know when. You should also consider that this is all a ruse – they want the Nazis to think these bridges are important to deflect attention from elsewhere. There's photo reconnaissance and RAF overflights of every bridge and fortification from Cherbourg to Zeebrugge."

And perhaps what he told her was a ruse? It all felt so cold. Susan returned her sandwich to the tray, appetite gone. This wasn't what she had envisioned she'd be doing. But it was important. Tebbitt, al-Masri, and the Colonel all had said so. Even if she was merely a distraction to what was truly important somewhere else. This was duty and the reality of being part of a war that was so huge and being fought in so many places.

For the first time, Tebbitt was not friend, teacher, companion, confidante, or the (sort of) lover (and despite what the rumours said and to her extreme disgruntlement). Now, Tebbitt was truly her conducting officer, knew more than she did, and would withhold information for the security of the larger operation. She pulled a little away from him on the cot so that their legs no longer touched.

"Very well," she replied. "Tell me what you can, and I'll have to figure out the rest."

Oo00oo

Another night, her last, in a stately 'ome of England. Tangmere Cottage was just at the entrance to the Tangmere RAF base. Bricked and crumbling, it was the final stop for the SOE agents bound for overseas. Dogs belonging to two of the pilots at the base had the run of the place, a sheepdog named Ming and Henry the spaniel.

_Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware  
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear._

They followed Mademoiselle Jeanne-Louise Lambert, codenamed Rat, everywhere.

It took eight days for Mrs. Caspian to disappear. In her place, Mademoiselle Jeanne Lambert slowly emerged, a shabby, young French countess gone to seed. A woman who had seen better days, fallen on hard times, and wrapped herself in a bygone era, in expensive clothing belonging to her mother that even Tebbitt could see was unfashionably old and ill fitting on so thin a body. She appeared a little vacant and sad.

Tebbitt knew where Jeanne and Louise had come from. The Shoemaker, the master forger at the British Embassy in Washington, had gifted her with two beautiful sets of shoes – fake identities. She had lived one of them, Mrs. Caspian. The other, she would occasionally trot out and take for a spin and so he'd come to know Mrs. Jane Louise Ellis over the last year. Mrs. Ellis was from Leeds, younger than Mrs. Caspian, and her dress – usually red – was cut low. She was a flirt and looked smashing on a man's arm. Jane Louise had become _Jeanne-Louise._

She had not explained why she wanted the surname _Lambert_ so badly but Atkins had not objected. It was a common French surname. Nor had she explained why she wanted to be known under the codename _Rat._

_And the Piper advanced and the children followed, And when all were in to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast._

It was ironic, how good they had both become at saying nothing about themselves at all. She was as much a mystery to him now as she had been the first day he had met her in Washington, a warm, muggy day in 1942 when she had politely rebuffed every advance and saved his neck, ass, reputation, and service record after he'd gone AWOL on the Congresswoman.

She had worn a blue suit, matching hat, white gloves, handbag. Her lipstick was perfect and not a hair out of place. Killer figure, amazing legs. And, he'd seen soon enough that Mrs. Caspian was no schoolgirl virgin. She was a woman who knew her way around a man. He'd sworn she was in her mid-twenties.

He'd seen her smash a killer in the head with a pot of roses and reach for a letter opener to finish the job. She'd coolly picked the lock of the briefcase of the Vice President of the United States. So, Tebbitt was not surprised when he learned that Mrs. Caspian had efficiently, and with a two handed thrust, killed a doe with a knife between the ribs, straight to the heart.

_A Wounded Deer - leaps highest - I've heard the Hunter tell - 'Tis but the Ecstasy of death - And then the Brake is still!_

A lucky kill, it was whispered at Beaulieu, not to demean the accomplishment. Sometimes the only thing an agent had was luck. Darker whispers said that she'd already been through Camp X or a Soviet training camp. Her marksmanship was fine, though she would never be comfortable with guns and it was one reason he and al-Masri had not recommended her placement with training armed units. Her skills in close range brawling and with knives were the stuff of legend. She had, on the first training, exceeded every instructor in the ranks on the Big and Little Joes and taken up the instruction in how to use the crossbows.

"How do you explain it, al-Masri?" he asked when he and the Major privately discussed her performance after the deer kill at a tea shop off Portman Square.

"Have you ever read Conan Doyle, Wing Commander?"

 _"Hound of the Baskervilles_ ," Tebbitt admitted. He'd not liked it much.

The quote I have in mind is from _The Sign of the Four_. 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

"So, no conventional explanation for Mrs. Caspian's talents?"

"No, though I have, of course, kept that out of the reports." Major al-Masri sipped his tea then continued. "By my judge, Mrs. Caspian is at least 30 years old and has killed in close quarters before. She is older than you are, actually."

He couldn't explain it. He stopped trying. As she had whispered to him in the Embassy coat closet, _We have to trust what our instincts tell us, our experience, our insight._ They had to trust each other even if there would still be lies. Given the choice, silence was better than the lie.

Mademoiselle Lambert had had dinner with Vera Atkins the night before, as the women spies all did before deployment. They made sure her affairs were in order and a will executed.

He had picked up her equipment in London from the Toyshop and they caught a long, slow train to Tangmere.

The weather was clear and cold and they were within the moon period – the seven days before and after the full moon. If all went well, tomorrow, she would board a Lysander and fly across the Channel. In the cellar of Tangmere Cottage, they went through her packing and equipment.

All her faded, French clothing was carefully rolled up and packed in a battered suitcase they had picked up in London. Madame Vion had guns hidden in the maternity hospital and a wireless set, so Mademoiselle Lambert was not burdened with those.

Mademoiselle needed weapons of other sorts.

"With the help of the Toyshop and that French handbag you received from First Officer Pole, they were able to install a camera."

The handbag had originally held a gas mask in the bottom. The wizards in Churchill's Toyshop had replaced the mask with a small camera. A lens was secreted in the folds of the bag and a woman could put the bag securely under her arm and point it at the target. "There is film in the bottom along with the camera. Madame Vion has photography development capability but rolls of film may be easier to smuggle back via Lysander. She will advise you."

Mademoiselle Lambert rooted through the bag, tested it under her arm and practised pointing the lens. The camera switch was on the bottom of the bag and she did not find it awkward to use. "Eh bien," she muttered, finally satisfied.

"I know your preference for knives so here are two and a wrist sheath."

She held out her bony arm and he gently buckled the leather straps in place. "Will you be able to do this on your own?"

"Oui."

He fingered the sheath now resting snugly in her forearm. "Too tight?"

She shook her head and slid the long dagger in. Tebbitt pulled her sleeve down and she tested the weight.

"C'est bon."

He assumed that meant, _"It's fine."_ She removed knife and sheath and set it aside with the other knife.

Tebbitt set next to the knives other fighting tools that he knew Mademoiselle had been proficient with in training – a garrote wire, knuckle duster and a ball cosh with an extending knife blade.

She deftly coiled the garrote wire and slipped it in with her comb and hairpins. "Merci." The knuckle dusters went into a little bag that could pass for jewelry.

"Close your eyes," he said, having saved the best toy for last.

"Une surprise?" Mademoiselle asked.

"Yes." Tebbitt removed it from the gunny sack and set it on their work table.

"Open your eyes."

She gasped. He couldn't follow the rapid fire French, but he understood the arms thrown around his neck and kiss on the cheek. Not flowers or chocolate for her _bon voyage._ He'd already given her poetry.

"We were only testing the crossbows. The boys in the Toyshop never intended for it to go operational. But you were so proficient with the Joes on the range, I thought you might want one."

Really, in Mademoiselle Lambert's hands, the Little Joe crossbow had more range and accuracy than an Enfield with a sniper sight and silencer.

"I had them make up bolts and darts for you, in different sizes and widths." He spread the arrows all out on the table, the fat ones that could hold an explosive charge, the thin needle sharp ones, and the 10-inch regular bolts. Reloading would take too much time, but then you didn't have time to reload with a shoulder-held Piat either. If you didn't get the tank on the first shot, it would get you. For Mademoiselle Lambert, the Little Joe was a sniper's weapon.

She reverently hefted the crossbow, expertly held it up and sighted through it. Swiftly, smoothly, she grabbed a bolt from the table, loaded, cocked, spun about and fired. The bolt went straight and sure and sank into a three inch wooden beam.

"Merci beaucoup. Il est idéal."

As she began carefully dismantling the crossbow and rolling up the bolts and darts in burlap, he went over to the beam and with some effort pulled out the dart embedded in the wood.

The remaining items were important but not exciting. He gave her a compass, map printed on silk, and French francs – not serialized and not with the damn pin in them that would broadcast to any Nazi interrogator that they had come straight from a bank. They were the small items that would help, in theory.

From his folder, Tebbitt withdrew another square of silk with numbers printed on it. They had, ironically, first seen these in Washington. A similar set had been taken from the spy who had killed Guy Hill.

"Here are the numbers for OTP coding." One time pad ciphers were the most secure. But not all agents were proficient and the silk sheet of randomised numbers could be found in a search. "You can use the OTP or you can use the poems."

Too many agents had been lost and codes cracked by clever Nazis because field agents had selected well-known poems on which they based their codes. The Nazi codebreakers had been very successful in breaking the codes because all they had needed was a volume of English verse. If they weren't going to use the OTP, it was better to use original poems the agent memorized. Tebbitt had helped the SOE's codemaster, Leo Marks, write dozens of poems for agents. He had written three for Mademoiselle Jeanne-Louise Lambert, codenamed Rat.

"Je veux utiliser les poèmes."

He had thought that would be her decision. There was something familiar and comforting about the poems. She was traveling light and could use the poems anywhere, without carrying incriminating codes. "We will go over them again tomorrow, make sure you are letter perfect on them. Also, you are to rotate them, don't ever use the same poem twice in a row. Begin each message with the number of the poem and the lines from which you took your six key words. That's all I'll need to break them." He wouldn't even need that, but it would make the work faster.

"Oui." She folded up the OTP silk and handed it back to him.

"Also, we need a security code, something in every message that tells me it's from you, something only you would know and that cannot be duplicated. If I get any message that is supposed to be from you, if that security isn't there, I'll know you've been taken and that you are communicating under duress."

There was only one thing that would work, that was unique to the person she really was, something that was under the codenames, the working names, the covers, and the forged identity cards. There was a code only she would know, and he only knew it because he had seen it.

"I think you know what we should use, Miss Pevensie."

She shook her head, frowning. "Je ne comprends pas."

"Don't you remember this?" She watched, eyes wide, as Tebbitt slowly removed her phenomenally indiscreet letter from his folder. "Major al-Masri gave it to me. It's the letter you wrote to Edmund in 1942. On its face, it appears to be a children's story about a land called Narnia. But that isn't right, is it, Queen Susan?"

She sputtered something angrily in French.

"If we argue, it's going to have to be in English, Mademoiselle."

"It was a children's story! Nothing more!"

A children's story and an allegorical cipher that described acts of espionage they had together perpetrated upon the United States. These were acts of deceit, theft, seduction that were not children's fare and certainly not something to be shared with their allies. "But it is a story that no one but you and your siblings know, correct?"

"Oui."

"In any message you send, somewhere, I want you to use a word from that story, one of the names or places, like…" Tebbitt looked down at the letter, now slightly yellowed and much creased. "Narnia, Tisroc, Tashbaan, Peridan, Sallowpad, Ettin, Aslan, or Dryad. Use one of those words, and I'll know it's from you. Do you understand?"

She looked rebellious and worried. "Mademoiselle? Do you understand?"

Finally, she nodded reluctantly. "Oui."

"Do you need to review it again? Memorize it?"

"No, I know it by heart." She took a deep breath. "Tebbitt?"

The reversion to English and his name startled him. "Yes?"

"If I need to, if I am in a hurry, and must get an urgent message out quickly, I may use that code again. It will be straight, like the _messages personnels_ , not coded. If you don't understand what I've sent, ask Edmund. He…" She stammered a little then pushed on. "His codename is Crow."

"You were Rat and he was Crow?" Tebbitt asked.

She smiled. "Yes. Peter was 'Sword' and Lucy was 'Heart.'"

Pulling Edmund in as a last resort was unorthodox and made perfect sense. It was simple, it was idiosyncratic, it wasn't written anywhere, and her brother had signed an Official Secrets Act non-disclosure. It would be fast and easy for her to use and with all wireless messages limited to less than 10 minutes, it was smart to have a fallback. They had lost dozens, hundreds of people and wireless agents were the most common victim because it was so easy for the Nazis to find them with their listening vans. Agents had been blown, codebooks found, wireless sets captured. The SOE had been a disaster in this regard. Susan Pevensie and her thirteen year old brother had managed to fool British Embassy staff for months with their children's story. If he had to use their code to keep his agent safe and the mission secure, he would.

"If I need to contact Crow, I will, Mrs. Caspian."

The worst was last and he did not want to give it to her, but did. Tebbitt removed the cork from his pocket. "You know what this is?"

"Oui." She was Jeanne Lambert again and took the cork from his fingers and carefully pulled the top off the plug. Inside the hollowed out cork was a tiny tablet.

She stared at it, then pressed the lid firmly back on and slid it into her pocket.

"The cork contains your cyanide tablet. And this envelope," he held it up, "has hollowed out buttons you can sew on to your clothes. That way you can keep the pill on you at all times. Don't sew it into a coat, because interrogators will make you remove your coat."

"Je comprends."

"Are there any letters you want to give me to send to your family?"

"Oui, s'il vous plait." Mademoiselle Lambert opened up her own file folder on the table and removed a stack of envelopes. The one on top was addressed to Lucy Pevensie. The others were to her mother and brothers.

"If anything happens to you, I will make sure they receive them." They would have to be cleared through censors first and probably gutted of all content, but he would not mention that.

_More than kisses, letters mingle souls._

ooOOoo

He had been sleeping fitfully. Being so close to the base was loud and he was nervous. He and Mademoiselle Lambert had gone into town and picked up dinner at a pub. They had not talked. She was slipping deeper into her role and only spoke in French.

Tebbitt jerked upright in bed when he heard the door handle turn and then saw the door to his room crack open. Mademoiselle quickly slipped in, and shut the door behind her. "Bonsoir. Pardon, excusez-moi."

"It's fine," he replied. It was very dark in the room. He could just make out her shape, a slim woman in an old white dressing gown.

She asked something, all in French, whispering.

"I'm sorry, Mademoiselle, but I don't understand you."

She stepped closer, stood next to the bed and said something else. He heard _joindre._

"You want to join me?"

"Oui."

He took her hand and let her sit on the edge of the bed. She smelled of army-issue soap. "Are you nervous?"

She shrugged and said something he thought meant "a little."

Of course she was. She had signed a last will and testament. She had a cyanide pill in a cork in her luggage. He ran his hand over hers, raised it to his lips, and kissed her palm. "It will go well. I believe in you."

He wanted to tell her more. That there was no invasion at Pas-de-Calais. It was all a ruse and Colonel Walker-Smythe had lied to her about it. There was no FUSAG, First U.S. Army group commanded by General Patton in Dover. Walker-Smythe had lied about that, too. The tanks and planes the Nazis had spotted in southeast England were fake, plywood and canvas. If she was captured, she would be able to repeat the lie under torture to her interrogators.

There was only one invasion coming and it was Normandy.

In June, over one hundred and fifty thousand Allied troops would land on over fifty miles of beach at dawn. Thousands of planes would fly overhead. Tens of thousands of men would assault the shore but a few miles from where she would be. She would wake up one night and hear the sounds of paratroopers landing all around and gliders would crash into the bridges. She would be in the middle of the biggest movement of troops the world had ever seen. If she was not rounded up by the Gestapo in a sweep of the Caen networks, she could be caught in crossfire when the landing happened, or be killed by a bomb dropped by her own countrymen.

He could not even tell her when this would happen so that she might protect herself. There would be _messages personnels_ and that was all the warning she and everyone else in the Resistance would get. And the intelligence heads had decided to give many of those messages too early, to cry wolf too many times, so that when the real invasion came, the Germans would not believe it.

He wanted to tell her that failure to take and hold the Caen bridges intact would be disastrous to the Allied landings.

But if she knew those things, if she was taken, and tortured, she might disclose those plans to the Gestapo and imperil the whole of their latter day Norman Conquest.

He had loved her for so long but duty was stronger. "You are brilliant," he assured her.

In the dark he felt but did not see her smile. Her fingers delicately traced his face. She had deliberately chewed her nails short as part of her cover and they were rough and ragged.

"Susan…"

"Susan? Qui est Susan? Je m'appelle Jeanne."

He realised now what she wanted, what she needed.

_Licence my roving hands, and let them go  
Before, behind, between, above, below._

These were not Susan Caspian's hands that wandered about him, deliberate and knowing. It was not even Mrs. Ellis of Leeds who edged closer, teased apart the buttons on his nightshirt, who shrugged out of her dressing gown to expose bare, white shoulders. This was the final test for Jeanne-Louise Lambert, codenamed Rat, the reserved and shabby French woman. It was she who gently pushed him back into the small bed and slid on top of him and pressed her hungry, trembling body against his.

"Susan, we agreed. We weren't going to…"

"S'il vous plait?"

 _Please_ , she whispered against his mouth, again and again. _Please._

_To teach thee, I am naked first ; why then,  
What needst thou have more covering than a man?_

ooOOoo

The Gentle Queen of Narnia was accustomed to all manner of uncomfortable transport – horses with bouncing gaits, swaying donkeys and mules, galleons, boats and dugouts, Gryphons, Giants, carts, and chariots. Crossing the Channel by the light of the moon in a gutted Lysander ranked among the very worse. Tebbitt had warned her and so she had stuffed softened wax in her ears but it was so very loud. Surely the gliders Peter had been training in would be better than this insufferable roar.

She was sitting on top of her little suitcase in the rear cockpit, her weapons were strapped and belted all over her body, and her knees were under her chin. How people did this with one man piloting the Lizzie and _two_ passengers she could not imagine. She felt them descend, lower. Pressing her nose up against the cockpit canopy glass she could make out the silver strip of the beaches of the Normandy coast. The pilot would bring them in low, navigating by only map, compass, and moonlight.

She took a deep breath and let it out and the country of France began to pass beneath them. _Aslan, your daughter is ready. Your will, not mine._

They followed a glimmering line of moonlit water, the River Dives she thought. There might have been gunfire or tracers but she couldn't hear anything over the roar of the Lizzie. The pilot banked into a long, arcing circle and Susan saw lights below in the shape of an "L" created by torches of members of the Resistance. It denoted the strip of field on which the pilot would land. There were flashes from a signal light and she carefully watched the dots and dashes. She panicked for a moment that the signal was wrong, that it was a trap, then realised they were signaling in English, not French, for the pilot. It was all clear.

Her pilot shouted something and gave her a thumbs up.

She braced herself and the little plane swooped down. Susan could feel the bottom of the plane brush treetops and then they cleared the wood, dropped like a stone, and bounced onto the field.

Susan jerked open the canopy even as they were still bumping along. Ten minutes at most on the ground and then the pilot needed to be airborne. The longer they stayed here, the greater the chance of ambush by Nazi patrol. They rolled to a stop.

"Good luck, Miss!" the pilot said.

"Merci!"

She slung a Sten over her shoulder and clambered down the port ladder as two shapes jogged toward them across the field. Her feet hit French soil. She held the gun at her hip, keeping it on the two coming toward them.

"Looks to be the regulars, Miss, nothing to worry about," the pilot shouted over the Lizzie's whirring propeller. It was probably the last English she would hear for a long time. Regardless, she would be the judge of who approached. The two slowed.

"It's a cold night to be in the woods." She stated the pass phrase, calling it out in French.

"At least we can see by the light of the second moon," one of them, male, responded. Susan lowered the Sten and the men – she could see now they were men – ran forward.

"Good evening!" the shorter man said. He handed her a stack of papers tied together with string.

These were the intelligence reports to go back to England. Susan scrambled back up the ladder and set them inside the Lizzie's cabin. She pulled her small suitcase out and tossed it onto the grass clear of the plane.

The men were busy removing the guns from the drop tank in the Lizzie's undercarriage. They hauled the crate out and, ducking under the wing, ran back across the field in the direction they had come with the crate between them.

Teetering on the ladder, Susan shut the canopy and jumped back down. The pilot saluted her from the cockpit. She grabbed her suitcase and ran after the men. The plane was already moving, turning about and in the light of the torches on the ground that had marked the "L" landing strip, Susan could see shadowy figures darting around, turning the torches off and disappearing into the darkness. Behind her, she heard the rumble of the plane bouncing back across the field, accelerating. She turned to look. Surely he would never clear the obscuring trees?

He did. The little plane whizzed up and she could see the trees swaying as the plane's belly grazed their tops. Then, he was gone, taking her tie to England with him.

"Come!" she heard a man say from the cover of the dark wood.

By the time she reached the truck, there was only one man, the short one who had spoken and given her the papers for the pilot to return to London. He had the back of the truck open and the crate of machine guns already opened. She understood they were intended for the Maquis around Saint Claire, south of Caen.

She set down her suitcase.

"I am Albert Lebourgeois, the driver at the hospital."

Which she now inferred since he was cramming British-made Stens into the back of an ambulance. "Jeanne-Louise Lambert," Susan said. "Why don't I hand the guns to you since you know where to hide them?"

"Thank you." One by one, she handed him machine guns and they disappeared into nooks and crannies of the dilapidated ambulance. He fitted most of the Stens under the stretcher, in the stretcher, and in the mattress of the stretcher and in the cushions of the driver's seat. He was obviously very accustomed to this and the whole operation was accomplished very quickly and in the dark.

She had been prepared to order loitering Resistance members away, as she'd understood that sometimes they took the arrival of an agent as an opportunity for a leisurely dinner, fete, and to raid an English agent's luggage for cigarettes and gum. Here, she found no fault with the security protocols and was impressed with the efficiency. The other members of the Resistance who had lit the plane's makeshift runway had already disappeared.

Lebourgeois buried the 9 mm rounds for the Stens in a fake bottom of the ambulance, under piles of bandages. He pushed everything back in place with a grunt and suddenly directed his torch on her, up and down. "You'll need to change clothes," he said and handed her a drab pile of cloth wadded up in the back of the ambulance. Susan had thought it was for storing the guns.

"Why? Is there something wrong with what I'm wearing?" She had spent significant effort to ensure her wardrobe was appropriate so his criticism disturbed her. Everything she was wearing and had brought was French and dated, faded and patched.

"Madame Vion will decide. For now, the baby will not fit."

_The baby? Of course. A brilliant subterfuge._

Susan scooped up the dress and held it against her. Predictably, it was many sizes too large – a maternity dress.

She went around to the side of the car and quickly slipped out of the dark top and trousers she had been wearing, put the gown on and folded up her own clothes and crammed them away in the suitcase. She didn't trust Monsieur Lebourgeois to not use any spare piece of cloth to hide the precious Stens.

"Put the baby on," Monsieur Lebourgeois said, handing her a pillow and belt contraption. "You will ride in the back, on top of the guns and if we get stopped, you need to pretend you are in labour."

Susan climbed in and settled on the bed of machine guns. Lying on your back, on top of 9 mm Stens, with a fake baby strapped to your belly was almost as uncomfortable as sitting on a suitcase in a Lizzie crossing the English Channel. Lebourgeois drove them out of the wood and they began inching along the road to the Bénouville Maternity Hospital with the lights doused. The pace was maddeningly slow but she knew they would have to conserve fuel and given curfews, should not be out at all.

She felt the car slow down and turned about on the stretcher to look out the front window. Lights illuminated shapes on the road ahead.

"Patrol?" she asked.

"Yes," he said tersely. "Hans Schmidt is the commander of the garrison in Bénouville so use his name, clearly and loudly, so they hear it."

Susan drew a soiled sheet over her body, making sure that her fake baby was both well covered and prominent. The cries of birthing mothers she had heard in Narnia were easy to recall. She began babbling and crying and counting out the time between contractions.

The ambulance slowed and she heard harsh words that she assumed meant "Stop!" in German.

Monsieur Lebourgeois tried to say something to respond to the German soldiers at the checkpoint but Susan screamed right over him. "The baby!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. "My baby is coming! Don't stop!"

A light shined into the window and landed on her face. "Take me to him! Our baby!" she cried. "Name him Hans after his father!"

She threw one hand over her face, clutched her stomach in the other and writhed on top of the Stens, gasping and groaning.

"Why aren't you with me, Hans! You're with that little whore! You said you would take me to Berlin!"

A torrent of French cursing she had learned at Beaulieu followed and having silently counted down from 120, Susan let out a scream. "Take me to the Garrison! Take me to him!"

"I need to get her to the hospital," she heard Monsieur Lebourgeois say to the guard shining the light inside the ambulance. "Unless you want to deliver a Commander's baby here on the road?"

He was speaking in French, but someone seemed to understand him because Susan heard what sounded like another barked order and the ambulance lurched forward.

She twisted around on top of the guns and saw something in the road ahead of them in the dimmed lights of the ambulance.

"We have an escort to the hospital," Monsieur Lebourgeois said. "So you will need to continue your labour."

"How far is it?" Susan asked, shifting as a gun muzzle stabbed her in the back.

"At this speed, about 30 minutes."

When they finally pulled into the drive of the Château de Bénouville, Susan was hoarse, crying and gasping again, and calling out desperately for Hans in between contractions she counted out at less than two minutes apart.

Monsieur Lebourgeois jumped out of the ambulance and she heard doors opening and closing and voices.

She kept shrieking. This wasn't how she'd intended to meet her Resistance contacts, but Susan was confident of her ability to imitate a birthing female. She had presided at births of Talking Beasts, layings and hatchings by Talking Birds, and births of Gryphons, Red Dwarfs (never Black), and the occasional actual human.

She clutched the rail of the stretcher, let out a piercing scream at two minutes, more or less, and cried, "He's coming! I can feel it! Hans, you bastard!"

The door of the ambulance opened. "Bring her inside," a woman's crisp voice said. "Poor thing. Take her straight to the birth suite."

"Yes! Please! Hurry! Hurry!"

Susan hoped none of the Stens would fall out as strong hands unloaded her and the stretcher. Lebourgeois was there and another man. She felt badly for neither man was young – of course if they had been young, they would not have been here at all. They would have been impressed into a work crew or conscripted into a regiment on the Russian front.

As they carried her into the front door of the hospital, she saw the German soldier next to a motorbike, looking things over with interest in the light of his torch and trying to peer into the ambulance and into the hospital's foyer.

"Thank you, soldier," the woman said, speaking very well and clearly and shutting the back of the ambulance. "Now leave us please so that I can see to our patient and another German baby that is coming very soon."

To emphasize the point, Susan let out another cry. "No! Take me with you! His father is there! Hans!" She concluded with a gut wrenching, writhing groan.

Obviously wishing to avoid awkward domestic scenes, the soldier hurriedly climbed back on his motorbike and, with a quick kickstart, roared off.

The front door closed with a slam. The woman, surely it was Madame Vion, stood at the window, listening and peeping through the blackout shade.

The sounds of the motorbike faded.

Her handlers set the stretcher down on the black and white tiled floor and a collective sigh echoed in the chilly marbled foyer.

Susan stayed where she was, taking her cue from the woman at the window.

"We are clear," she said quietly, turning away. She gave Susan a critical once over. "Well played, Mademoiselle. You are Jeanne Lambert?"

Susan threw off the soiled sheet and slid off the stretcher. "Madame Vion?"

With the fake baby and ill fitting dress, it was not a graceful few steps forward to shake Madame's hand.

"I am she." Her handshake was cool and regal, very much like the woman herself.

The other man, taller, older, and heavier than Lebourgeois offered his hand. "Welcome to Château de Bénouville, Mademoiselle Lambert. I am Claudius Desvignes."

"Charmed," Susan replied. She knew from her reading that Lebourgeois was Madame Vion's ambulance driver and that Monsieur Desvignes was her accountant and office manager.

"I will bring the ambulance into the garage," Lebourgeois said.

Susan shimmied out of the fake baby belt and it fell to the floor and tangled a little in her baggy gown. She stepped out of the contraption. It might be immodest but she had already stripped in a wood behind an ambulance door. "Thank you, Monsieur," she said and handed him the belt. "Madame Vion, should I help you store what is here on the stretcher or unload the ambulance?"

She waved her hand. "My men know what needs to be done so that we may get them to our contacts." Desvignes was already wheeling the stretcher away down a dark corridor. "Do you have a bag?"

"Here," Lebourgeois said from the doorway, setting Susan's battered suitcase in the foyer.

Madame Vion looked it over critically and nodded curtly. "It will do. Come. Follow me."

Madame's attractive heels clicked on the tiled floors; Susan's own boots made only a soft squeak sound. It was all very dim, lit only by a torch that Madame carried, but Susan could see the proportions of the Château were huge. The corridor was wide, the ceiling was high. It had been too dark in the foyer so she had not been able to see much of the famous staircase or any of the beautiful cupola. "The office is there," Madame Vion said, and pointed down a branching corridor. "You know the history of the Château?"

"Yes, Madame," Susan replied politely. "It was built between 1770 and 1780 by Ledoux for the marquis of Livry and is a testament to neoclassical architecture." It was also huge. "The council of Calvados acquired it in 1927 and you have been the administrator of the hospital here since 1935."

"I hope you are as well prepared in other areas, Mademoiselle." Madame Vion pushed open a door. This will be your apartment. "Please change to something appropriate and join me in my office."

As the quick clip of Madame's heels faded, Susan quickly donned a plain dark dress (Schiaparelli!) that was very similar to what the administrator was wearing herself. Her room had a wash basin and commode, a narrow hospital bed and a little desk. While it was not a Paris apartment, neither was it a rough Maquis camp. For what was to be done, it was perfect. It was the middle of the night, she was edgy and hungry, but Susan took a moment to put on lipstick. Madame Vion was wearing a light coat and so Susan put one on as well. If Madame was expecting Mademoiselle Lambert to take dictation at 3 in the morning, Susan would probably not be able to manage it.

It would not do to keep Madame waiting and so she hurried down the hall back to the office suite using her own torch and glad she had paid attention to the directions. The briefing papers had referred to Madame as _la comtesse_ and though she had thought it fanciful at the time, she did not now. The Countess Vion ruled her domain and Susan recognized a Queen of the realm when she saw one. This was not to be, as the saying went, Susan's own show.

The Château was enormous though she understood that only a small part of it was given over to maternity. The rest of the vast, drafty palace hid weapons and supplies, downed Allied fliers, and French men avoiding conscription into German slave labour, the Todt Organization, or the army.

Upon entering Madame's practical but spacious office, it did not appear there would be any secretarial work that evening. Madame had poured two glasses of wine and set out a depressingly German plate of sausage and cheese. Susan sat next to her on the divan in the office. A single lamp burned that did not illuminate much beyond the table at which they sat.

"I thought you might be hungry," Madame said. "We do not have bread."

Susan sat and began weaving the cover story. "We do not have bread in Le Mans either, Aunt."

"And how is my brother's wife?"

"Recovering well from her cold, Aunt. She manages in the shop. Life is hard, but no more hard than anywhere else."

Madame Vion nodded and smiled, a little. Her shrewd eyes slid over the dress Susan wore. It was old, a little frayed, and too big. "You are wearing a Schiaparelli, Jeanne?"

"Better than a Chanel, no?"

Rumours were that the famous designer had taken up with a high-ranking German officer. Susan had not deemed it advisable to include anything from Coco Chanel in her luggage.

The smile was a little wider. "Your first impression is a favourable one."

"Thank you, Aunt," Susan replied. "And thank you for having me. I shall do whatever you ask to ease your work."

"Eat, please. You have had a difficult journey." Susan dutifully took a small piece of cheese and tasted it, conscious that this was a test of how she ate it and her reaction to it. To a Narnian palate, it was fine. To English tastes, it was milky, soft, and foreign tasting. She wondered if this was the sort of food that the French had made and then hidden from the Nazis, or fobbed it off on their occupiers as not worthy of consumption. She did not know how the French would value what she ate now.

Madame Vion let out a little sigh. "I will need to watch you carefully, Jeanne, to ensure you do not betray yourself or us. The Germans I think you can fool. The Milice are another matter though they are not so active this far north. We must keep you from them."

"Should I have appreciated the cheese or spit it out?" Susan asked. She wished these were errors that she could avoid.

"It is Pont-l'Évêque, a famous cheese of Normandy and a great rarity in these times."

Susan deliberately took another bite, registering the taste. "Thank you for giving me my first taste of Pont-l'Évêque!" Susan exclaimed. "It was always too fine for our humble meals! I will take only another small piece. We must save it for a special occasion!"

Madame Vion nodded. "Better. You look younger than you are and that will work to our advantage. A woman wishes to be sophisticated and look older than she is until the day she wishes she appeared young again. I would prefer your presence was unnecessary altogether. Having you here is a great risk."

"You already take great risks, Aunt, but I understand your concern and share it. Information about the bridges is important to the liberation of France. Which means we must not be caught for we might reveal to our enemy some part of a larger plan."

Léa Vion had been successful in the Resistance for four years with a garrison less than two kilometres away. Dozens of fliers and other people had been smuggled out of the Château de Bénouville and Susan knew the odds – usually one person died for every Allied soldier saved. Whole networks had been rolled up, hundreds of agents dead and disappeared, but Léa Vion was still here.

Madame raised her glass of wine and Susan brought up hers as well. "Santé, Jeanne."

The French toast translated as _health_.

"Santé, Aunt."

* * *

To follow, Chapter 4, Building Bridges, D-Day Minus 2 Months

* * *

Minor historical notes: The descriptions of the agent training, the moon periods of the Lysander drops, the dogs at Tangamere, the cyanide tablets in cork, the use of poems as ciphers, the last will executed, and so forth are all taken from SOE sources. The conditions at Brigmerston House codenamed Broadmoor, headquarters of General Windy Gale, commander of the 6th Airborne, the deception of FUSAG, the intense intelligence operations surrounding the Caen Canal and River Orne Bridges, the garrison at the bridges, the Gondree Cafe and other related material come from Pegasus Bridge source material.

As mentioned, the only fictional characters here are Susan, Colonel Walker-Smythe, Major al-Masri, and WC Tebbitt. There is little information (in English) about Leah Vion (sometimes spelled Lea) and even less of her accountant Claudius Desvignes and her ambulance driver, Albert Lebourgeois.

Tebbit's poetry include the following: The Power of the Dog, Rudyard Kipling; The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning; A Wounded Deer - leaps highest by Emily Dickinson; To Sir Henry Wotton, by John Donne; Elegy XX, To His Mistress Going To Bed, by John Donne

* * *

 


	4. D-Day minus 2 months, Building Bridges

****

* * *

Soldiers' rough (though period-appropriate) language ahead.

* * *

The path was muddy enough that the bicycle tyres slurped and slid. Susan rose up on the pedals, leaned on the handlebars, and pushed the bike through the puddle. She'd hammered a bumper out of tin and fixed it to the back of the bicycle so at least she would not have a stripe of wet dirt down her back.

Ladies were supposed to have delicate legs. A lady's legs should not be bruised, bumpy, and muscular. But neither should a lady's early spring cycling be along a canal lined with barbed wire. Over twenty kilometres of cycling a day was not leisurely, either.

A plane went overhead. From the sound, she thought it was a _Storch._

Another push and she was free of the muck and on gravel. The "medicine" in her basket rattled on the bumpy road. Susan made the trip daily to Café Gondrée to deliver remedies for Madame Gondrée's "feminine complaints." The bottles contained coloured, scented water. The labels tied to the medicines or stuffed in the empty bottles were the reports by Georges and Thérèse Gondrée of what the Nazis from the garrison had had to say in the Café that day while drinking their beer and eating their sausages.

The road north from the Château ended at the cross street that went straight east across the Caen Canal and toward the River Orne Bridge and Ranville. Swinging her leg over the bike, Susan dismounted and walked along the road, between the Café and the Caen Canal Bridge across the street. There were two lone soldiers marching its length and it all looked lonely, cold and gray. She could hear the laughter and talking inside the Café, all in German. The garrison's soldiers liked the Café's location because they could watch the bridge from the vantage of an inside table.

Susan stepped out of the way of the Café's window and went to the corner. If she blocked their view, they would yell at her and Jeanne Lambert did not draw attention to herself. Mademoiselle Lambert was a quiet, modest young woman who peddled her rickety bike about doing errands for _la comtesse_ Vion. Jeanne was shy and did not speak unless spoken to. Jeanne noticed everything and took very good notes.

Susan crouched down by her bike to fiddle with the chain that worked perfectly well. She watched as the two guards walked the length of the bridge, coming within a few metres of where she was. One of them nodded and said something.

Susan muttered "I don't speak German" in French and shyly returned to her bike chain. The men laughed and turned to begin their circuit again. Susan registered the individual details – hair, height, build, weight, boots, rank, marks on the uniform – anything that would identify one individual from another. Pulling a grease pencil out of her pocket, she shoved up her sleeve and made some quick marks on her arm to remind her. She'd been trying this for weeks to try to determine how many men were in the garrison. Two privates, one brown haired, one black. The brown haired one was about 170 centimetres, 65 kilos, the other taller, heavier…

With a sigh, Susan shook her sleeve back down and tucked the grease pencil away. It was extremely difficult to get an accurate headcount when they were never all in one place at the same time.

She set the bicycle against the red brick wall of the Café and pulled the wooden box with the "medicine" from her basket.

Pushing the door open with her hip, there were shouts of complaint, in German, probably because she was letting the cold in. With both hands full, there wasn't much Susan could do.

Madame Gondrée came hurrying forward with baby Françoise on her hip. She shut the door.

"Good afternoon, Jeanne!" Madame Gondrée said.

"And to you, Madame," Susan replied, following her through a swinging door to the small kitchen in the back of the Café, and out of sight of prying eyes, sharp ears, and observant, nosy collaborators. Over her mother's shoulder Françoise stared at Susan, looking very serious.

She nodded to Monsieur Gondrée, who always looked so dapper and nicely presentable, even when serving beers. He had been at Lloyd's Bank and worked in casinos in Cannes. Thérèse had been a nurse. The soldiers who frequented the Café did not know that Monsieur Gondrée spoke English, that Thérèse spoke German, and that everything they said was going through Susan back to Madame Vion and on to England.

The door swung shut behind them, dimming the noise.

"Anything?" Susan asked quietly, setting down the crate. She removed the full bottles and put the empty ones in that Thérèse had already set out on the counter.

"The officers are complaining about the arrival of new soldiers at the bridge garrison," Madame Gondrée said, bouncing Françoise.

"Complaining?" Why would they be complaining?"

"I don't know, but they have a very low opinion of them. They are expected at any time."

The noise level rose in the Café and they heard the sounds of hobnailed boots stomping out, all together.

"Thérèse! Mademoiselle Lambert! Come see!" Monsieur Gondrée called.

They hurried back to the Café. All the Germans had left. They joined Gondrée at the front window. A lorry had come from the east, across the Canal Bridge and pulled up to a stop right in front of the Café. Susan did not speak German, but she could tell the officers and NCOs outside were disgusted from their expressions.

"They are saying they are no better than Todts," Thérèse said, referring to the slave labourers of the Todt Organization who built for their pharaoh overseers of the Third Reich. She paused. "Though they are using cruder terms."

A Sergeant in the cab of the lorry got out and went around to open the back of the truck.

Soldiers began jumping out the back of the truck, lugging packs and gear. Susan could see from the uniforms they were enlisted privates, the lowest rung of the Wehrmacht. She began counting the ragged-looking men. _1, 2, 3, 4…_

Whoever they were, they were going to be here for a while given the duffels. _11, 12, 13…_

The Nazi officers and NCOs from the Café started yelling at and ordering the new arrivals.

The new arrivals stared at them.

The officers and NCOs from the Bridge garrison yelled louder. The new arrivals shouted back.

"Oh my goodness," Madame Gondrée said under her breath.

"What is it?" she asked.

"They are complaining that the new soldiers don't understand them!"

"Don't understand them?" Susan asked.

"Italian," Monsieur Gondrée said, shaking his head.

"You're right," Susan said. "Most of the new soldiers are speaking Italian."

"Some are speaking something else," Madame Gondrée added after a few moments as they all listened intently. "It is not German."

"Polish," Susan said, suddenly recognizing the language and so thankful for the classes at Beaulieu. "The High Command has sent the bridge reinforcements who do not speak German."

ooOOoo

By dim low lamplight, behind blackout shades, Susan prepared her report. The bustle of the hospital continued around her, with women going into labour, being admitted, and leaving with babies who were (usually) German. After discussing it with Tebbitt, Major al-Masri, and Colonel Walker-Smythe, General Gale recommended that the intelligence on the bridges would come by Lysander rather than by wireless radio. They needed detailed information and that could not be communicated in 9 minute spurts of Morse Code. Anything longer than 9 minutes and the listening Abewehr radio vans were able to pinpoint the w/t operator and arrest her.

The risk was too great, so that meant writing reports, ciphering them, and either delivering them directly to a Lysander at night or peddling them to Madame Vion's contact, a chemist in the Centurie network in Caen.

The report written, now she had to cipher it. In the rotation, it was time to use the second poem Tebbitt had written for her. Susan took a bit of paper and quickly wrote out the poem. She would burn the scrap after encrypting the report, leaving no trace of her work. Since she and Tebbitt rotated the poems with each message, even being caught with one bit of English doggerel would not help her captors in their game of _Das Englandspiel_ , in which the Gestapo captured an agent and her codebook and then sent faked messages back to the SOE. Tebbitt expected the next poem in the rotation and if she did not use it, he would know something was wrong.

_Woman of mystery  
Cloaked in gold  
Your smile enigmatic  
Your story untold_

_Thread through my imagination_   
_You are ever my queen_   
_My heart is turbulent_   
_Yet you are serene_

_My wanderings from you_   
_A useless ploy_   
_In your presence I'm ever_   
_Surprised by joy_

Tebbitt wrote poems for many of the agents, making them simple and easy to remember. She wrote 2 4 1 8 5 12 9 and from that he would know which poem and which lines. He knew her agent's "handwriting" so well, he would be able to decipher it regardless.

_Untold. Mystery. Serene. Imagination. Joy. Wanderings._

U was A, M was B, S was C, I was D, J was E, W was F, N was G… letters would repeat, but Tebbitt said not to worry. He would understand.

First, her key, the clue that would tell Tebbitt that it was she, and she alone, who communicated. It made her so uncomfortable to use Narnia here, but Tebbitt had ordered it. She'd been caught once, already, using Narnia code to describe the real world of espionage. The more she used Narnia in spy work, the harder it was to speak of Narnia with the others. It was a hopeless muddle.

With a deep sigh, she wrote the word, _Tashbaan_ and coded it. Then she began ciphering her report.

_Conscripts arrived to increase garrison at the bridges and supplement fighting force. Officers and NCOs are career Wehrmacht and very young ethnic German. The newest enlisted soldiers are Italian conscripts and a few Poles who either do not or pretend to not speak German.  
Estimate strength of garrison at 50 men.  
No drilling or manoeuvres observed._

She wasn't a soldier, but they would still want her assessment. In her opinion, they were sloppy and had no training. They could not communicate to provide the training. They were conscripted, unwilling, taken from conquered countries. They might dig in, but this was not a spirited and motivated fighting force.

_Poorly equipped, with French, Polish, and Italian weapons. Italians have some Stens which are mocked by Germans._

Ability to defend is moderate; counter-offensive capability is negligible.  
Guards watch Caen Canal Bridge from Café. Garrison and most of the force is at the Caen Canal. Have only observed five troops defending Orne River Bridge at any one time.

Chambers for explosives under bridges are observable. They are rigged for demolition.

CO Major Schmidt spends several nights a week with lover in Ranville. Enjoys Normandy very much.

It had taken her hours to code the report. It would be another day to take the report to Caen. From there, it might be days before her report made it to Tebbitt via Lysander.

Susan added,

_Situation could change rapidly. In emergency, I will send messages via w/t at 1200. Please monitor._

Rat.

ooOOoo  
Peter sat back in his bunk, snuffed out his cigarette in a tin cup, and gave his boots another once over.

The air in the platoon's barrack reeked of boot polish and canal water. They'd just gotten back from a three-day bridge exercise near Trowbridge and the spring mud and river muck of Wiltshire were all over everything.

They all had to scramble up, in stockinged feet, when Lieutenant Brotheridge came into the barrack.

"At ease. And budge over Gray," Brotheridge said, sitting down on his batman's bunk. He pulled off his own boots. "Anyone got some polish?"

Gray was supposed to do that sort of thing for the Lieutenant, but Danny Brotheridge had started as one of them, just a regular enlisted bloke, a corporal, who the Major had recommended for a commission and OCTU. Danny was an officer now, but he still liked spending time here with his platoon in the barracks where he'd started, gassing about football and beer and polishing his own boots. Peter had learned more about Manchester United in the last year than in his whole life. They had been terrible and their followers all seemed to think it would be better, eventually, some day, after the War, and when hell froze. Arsenal was the platoon favourite. He'd deemed it politic to become a fan.

"How's your wife, sir?" Peter asked, starting to thread the boot laces again. "Still doing well?"

"She is, thanks. She thinks the baby's due second week in June," Brotheridge said, pulling a jackknife from his pocket. "Do your job and give me your rag, Gray."

"Does his own boots and gets all cheeky, he does," Gray said, whipping the rag at their Lieutenant.

Peter felt a brief pang – he and Edmund used to do the same game with kitchen towels and would have to hide or burn the evidence after they'd shredded them to bits in their tug-of-wars.

Brotheridge started scraping the mud off the boot soles with his knife and bits flaked onto the floor Peter had just swept. The Lieutenant looked down at the mess he was making. "Sorry, lads. I'll clean that up before I go."

"We'll make Gray do it, since he got off doin' your boots," Parr said. Parr was lying on his bunk writing a letter to his wife, Irene. Brotheridge's wife's name was Margaret. Peter knew who was married in D Company, the names of their wives, and which men were expecting babies. Parr and the others would rib him for knowing these things like a gossipy grandmother, but the High King in him would never not take polite interest in the small and large doings of each person's life.

"Everybody dried out from the exercise?" Brotheridge asked. "Word is Generals Poett and Kindersley were just cock-a-hoop about it. General Gale commended D Company for our…" Brotheridge cleared his throat.

"Good looks?"

"Drinking, smoking, and chasing skirts?"

"Tossing paras into canals?"

"For our dash and verve," Brotheridge said, affecting a posh accent.

They all laughed. Except…

"That's all to the good, isn't it, sir?" Gray asked.

Brotheridge nodded. "The best. General Gale set out the exercise himself and the Commander of the 6th Airborne didn't do that for just one Company for the hell of it."

They hadn't even been made to march to the site. They were driven to three bridges over two canals about thirty miles from the Bulford Camp. The umpires made them wait until 2300 and then they pranged. There were paras defending the bridges but they'd managed to capture the bridges intact and before the umpires declared them blown.

It had been a first class firefight and a cracking good time, even if they hadn't been shooting with live. When it was all blanks, flashes, and bangs, fists were better, anyway. The umpires hadn't been happy and the other paras from the 6th guarding the bridges definitely got the worse of D Company's fighting skills. It'd been terrific and the perfect break from the monotony of Major Howard's relentless drilling.

"Brotheridge!"

They all scrambled up as Major Howard strode into the barrack. "Boots on, Lieutenant!" the Major said. "In my briefing room. Now."

Brotheridge pushed his feet into his boots and hurried out after Major Howard.

Every man pulled out a cigarette. Peter relit the one he'd started and shared a light with Gray. No one was going to try to sleep or leave the barrack until Brotheridge came back. Whatever it was, their platoon leader wouldn't leave them in the dark.

Parr started a poker game, but Peter wasn't interested. He started a letter to Lucy, who'd been having just a wretched time in school. It was now easy to see that the transition had been hardest for her – not because she doubted Aslan or her duty to this world, but because there were so many more obstacles for her to fulfilling it. England just wasn't ready for the Valiant Queen and Lucy was determined, single-handedly, to change that thinking. It was a very tall order. The way things were going, Lucy would be the first of them to get sent down.

When Brotheridge finally came back, over an hour later, the barrack's air was thick with smoke and tension.

Brotheridge's colour was high and he was obviously excited. He plopped back down on Gray's bunk with a whoosh of air, ran a hand over his face, and grinned like the devil himself.

"Well, boys, pack your bags because you're getting two weeks of leave."

There were whoops and hollers, back slaps, and pillows tossed in the air. Brotheridge motioned everyone for quiet.

"In the meantime, General Gale has ordered D Company expanded. We're getting a platoon of sappers."

Sappers? They were combat-trained engineers. Their addition to D Company meant _something_ was _finally_ coming and whatever it was would involve taking something on. _Bridges_ , Peter thought, based on the exercise they had just done. The second front was finally coming and D Company was going to be pranged onto bridges somewhere behind Hitler's Fortress Europe.

"And," Brotheridge was having to talk louder above the noise, "General Gale has ordered that two more platoons join D Company. Captain Priday is going to speak to Lieutenants Fox and Smith in B Company about bringing their squads on."

Brotheridge's news was finally so shocking that they went to silent muttering.

"It's that big, sir?" Gray asked.

Brotheridge nodded. "We need to train together for a week or two, get used to being six platoons rather than just four, be one big family, and then General Gale has laid on Exercise Mush, beginning the 21st of April."

He paused dramatically and his face turned redder and his grin wider. "Mush will involve the entire 6th Airborne. We're all going up against the 1st Airborne and a Polish para brigade."

The low mutters turned to loud, excited swearing.

Peter was too stunned to say anything and they all thought he swore like a schoolgirl anyway, so he kept his mouth shut. Brotheridge was describing a _training_ exercise of over 8,000 men from the 6th alone. This was enormous.

"What're our orders, sir?" Parr asked.

There couldn't be any surprise. Between the last exercise and now the addition of 30 sappers, D Company's mission among the 6th Airborne's paratroopers was clear. The whole purpose of paratroopers was to land in enemy territory, whether by glider or parachute, and either take out specific targets or prevent the Jerrys from scuttling their own structures to keep the Allies from using them when they advanced.

"For Exercise Mush, D Company's orders are to take intact a bridge rigged for demolition across the Thames in Lechlade," Brotheridge said.

"This is the run-up, isn't, sir?" Bailey asked. "It's coming? We're invading? France? Or Belgium?"

Brotheridge stood and flicked the abandoned boot rag at Gray. "Our orders are top secret. Draw your own conclusions and don't share 'em with anyone. If the Major learns you squeaked, you'll be RTU'd and I'll personally beat you to a bloody pulp. Enjoy your leave and report back here sober and ready."

ooOOoo

"Have you decoded it yet?" al-Masri asked.

"No," Tebbitt said curtly. "Rat only sent it by w/t an hour ago. Which means she thought it was so urgent, it couldn't wait for Lysander."

"Are you sure it's from Rat?"

"First word was _Ettin_ , uncoded. Only Rat would use that."

"True. I've informed General Gale. He has summoned Major Howard from Bulford. They'll be waiting at Broadmoor for word."

"Then be quiet, al-Masri, and let me do this."

Rat had taken no chances. She'd used the first poem, lines 2,3,4,6 and 7. It was very short, only 14 characters, plus the Ettin signal and the numbers. He could feel her urgency at the other end. It was a sense – some agents struggled with w/t, others were fluent. Jeanne-Louise Lambert spoke Morse Code as well as she spoke French and he was one of the best receivers in the SOE. They'd lost dozens of operators in the cities to the signal-detecting vans, but they weren't as active in the countryside. Rat was probably bicycling out into a field with the w/t set and sending from there. She'd only take the risk, only convince Madame Vion to let her take the risk, if it was important.

Tebbitt quickly wrote out the alphabet and the corresponding coded letters underneath.

A = R  
R_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Can I help?"

"You can stop hovering."

F=O and it appeared twice.

RO_ _ _ _ _ _ _ O_ _ _ _

R=M and appeared three times.  
ROMM_ _ _ _ _ OM _ _ _

_Rommel_

"al-Masri, the Gondrées and Vion have come through again. It's something about Rommel."

ROMMEL/ _ _ _ OM _ _ _

The Major looked over his shoulder. "And the next word?"

"I think it's _is_." T=S and that meant E=I and it appeared twice.

ROMMEL/IS/ _OMI _ _

Was he right? Yes, and if H=C.

ROMMEL IS COMING

Tebbitt tore the sheet off the pad and handed it to al-Masri who was already ordering the switchboard to phone up Broadmoor.

"Tell General Gale and Major Howard. It should go up the chain from there. Someone else is paying attention to Normady and the Bénouville bridges."

ooOOoo

Susan wanted to hate him on sight. She couldn't because she could not hate competence. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel reeked of competence as he toured the bridges between Ranville and Bénouville. The accompanying staff, his driver, and the guards in his entourage all exuded the same qualities of polite, capable, aggressive professionals. Rommel's very presence encouraged excellence. You wanted him to notice you and to recognize your own loyalty and skill.

The lustrous presence forced even Major Schmidt, the garrison's CO, to spruce up for the occasion. The garrison troops were all sober, polished, and so proud to receive the special attention of the famous Field Marshall.

The local people were no better. Everyone had come out on the bright May morning to gawk. Susan stood with the Gondrées outside the Café. Madam Vion had even condescended to leave the hospital and was introduced to some of the Field Marshall's staff. Susan suspected Madame Vion would wash her hands well once she returned to the hospital. If they had been made to wave little flags with Swastikas, it would have been intolerable. Instead it was simply a nice day watching frighteningly competent German officers look at what, from their attentive interest, seemed to be the most important bridge in all of Europe.

Unfortunately, they were too far away to overhear as the Field Marshall walked slowly about the Caen Canal Bridge. A clerk was following Rommel and he and Major Schmidt were both taking copious notes.

Susan thought Rommel was making recommendations for changes to the garrison. New defensive measures? What might they be?

"I hope they discuss it all in the Café later," Monsieur Gondrée whispered to his wife.

Madame Gondrée nodded.

They found out the next day when the Caen Canal Bridge erupted with activity. As she pedaled to the Café, Susan saw the conscripts, not drilling, but digging silt trenches along the embankments of the Bridge. Others were piling up sandbags to make machine gun nests and fortifications.

Madame Gondrée was very busy in the Café drawing beers for the soldiers. With a glance, Susan took her box of medicine and followed Monsieur Gondrée to the back kitchen.

Monsieur Gondrée began whispering to her as she removed the bottles from the box and replaced them with the empty ones Thérèse had received yesterday and emptied down the drain.

He was nervous, speaking very quickly, and referring to cryptic notes on his notepad buried in orders for beer and sausage. "They've been talking all morning about Rommel's orders. They are arming the bridge. They will install six light machine-guns and one anti-aircraft machine-gun on the west bank, surrounded by sandbags. They are going to build a pillbox on the east bank for an anti-tank gun. They will put up razor wire over all the embankments."

"The River Orne Bridge? Did they discuss that?" Susan asked, glancing at the door to the Café. She could see Madame Gondrée juggling mugs of beer and they needed to conclude quickly.

"Rommel disagrees with his command. He thinks an attack would come from the west, from the beaches, so the Canal Bridge is to be more defended. Still, they will install a machine gun and weapons pit on the River Orne Bridge, too."

Susan repeated it all and he nodded. "Yes, I think that is all." He tore off his sheet of notes and she stuffed it inside one of the medicine bottles.

"Georges!" Madame Gondrée called.

He nervously wiped his hands on his apron. "If we learn more…"

"Tell me tomorrow. This will keep me busy all night and we need to send a report as soon as possible. Madame Vion says they will send a Lysander tomorrow night."

With a parting nod to Thérèse, Susan quickly left the Café and pedaled as fast as she could back to the Château, already composing the report in her mind.

ooOOoo

It was the closest anything had felt to real combat since he'd started training. Peter could hear the planes and the whooshes of paras, and feel the air currents stirred by silent gliders overhead. There were thousands of men involved in Operation Mush scattered over three counties. It all gave him the sense of being part of something much, much larger. Not only did it finally seem closer to real combat, for the first time, Peter felt that this was bigger than anything he had ever done in Narnia.

D Company had been driven to a site late at night and then they'd marched about three miles in the dark. Now, at 0100, he was lying in the damp grass with 179 other men from six platoons and thirty combat-ready sappers. Somewhere ahead was a bridge. With so many in their Company, he hoped it was a large bridge because they'd be tripping over themselves.

Peter felt wide awake and eager. They'd done night exercises before, but never anything this large against a mock enemy. Peter had been fretting over the details and it felt good to finally be out and on the operation. How would they make out friendlies from enemy once the shooting started? They weren't using live, but that's what the umpires were there for. The umpires would be on the bridge and tell you if you shot more of your own people than the enemy by mistake, blue-on-blue fire. This wasn't a problem they'd ever had in Narnia where there were always those in his Army who could see at night and usually anything with a human shape was enemy anyway. Here, would he be able to tell the difference in the smoke and heat of battle? Peter gripped his Sten and shifted in the dirt.

That's what the exercise is for, Lieutenant Brotheridge had said. Let everyone see the problems and work them out before you needed to.

There was muttering ahead. He didn't hear the words but he felt the movement. The umpires had given them the go-ahead to begin the assault to take the bridge.

Hooper and Sweeney's platoons were moving. Peter saw Lieutenant Brotheridge signal and he and the rest of their platoon all rose and began to creep forward. The others – Smith, Fox, and Wood's platoons – were behind them.

Had Major Howard known all along they'd be doing night operations? Peter didn't think so. It was just the mark of a good commander to anticipate what would be needed and train for it so they were ready when it came. Peter had had his doubts but every step closer to combat made him appreciate anew what Major Mad Bastard had done. It was as Brotheridge had said months ago – Major Mad Bastard had turned them from a common infantry unit into commandos.

Peter heard muffled swearing up ahead and rough movement. He continued forward cautiously in a crouch with his brotherhood from the platoon around him – Brotheridge ahead and Parr, Gray, Gardner, and Bailey around him. A tangle of barbed wire rose up in front of them. It would take more than razor wire to even slow D Company down. He couldn't tell who, but there were three poor sods already lying down on top of it, creating the bridge so the rest of them could walk on the men's backs over the hazard. There was a trick to it they'd drilled on over and over – you could lie down on wire and if you did it right you hurt more from men and their gear tromping over you than the wire that was under you. Given his size and agility, Peter was usually one of the ones on the ground; he was saved from it this time only because the other platoons had gotten there first. Men on either side of the human bridge were busy cutting the rest of the wire to widen and clear the path. Peter had his cutters ready but the sappers had it taken care of in a few silent moments.

With a whispered, "Sorry," he stepped as quickly and lightly as he could over the prone body and reformed up, silently, with the rest of his platoon.

He could now just make out the bridge, about fifty yards ahead. It was good-sized, over one hundred yards long, made up of stone and arches. Against the light of the moon, he could see shapes walking its length on patrol.

The word was passed through the lines. Hooper's platoon would go first, then Sweeney, then his own.

The enormity of the task hit him hard. How were Major Howard and the rest of Command going to do this when it was real? Peter was flummoxed. Blowing a bridge was dead easy. How did you move six platoons and thirty sappers onto a bridge rigged for demolition and _not_ have it blown from underneath you? The enemy hears the sounds of combat, sees soldiers tearing across the bridge, shooting at anything and the trigger switch would be _right there_ , right in a bunker or tower. It would be someone's job to do nothing but sit and wait for just this eventuality. Throw the switch and the whole thing blows. The Germans knew they were coming and that it would be France or Belgium. It would be so easy.

Could Command's plan really only be that someone would make a mistake or be asleep and not throw the switch to detonate the bridge, wherever it was? It was never good planning to rely on someone else's error for the success of a mission but maybe that's all there was. Peter could not think of any better alternative. It wasn't a command decision he envied at all.

Peter crept up to position, next to Parr and Bailey, behind Brotheridge. Gray and Gardner were just behind him. The other platoons were moving swiftly and quietly toward the bridge. With all the noise of planes overhead, it was hard to hear them and that was part of the plan, too. There were guards on the bridge but they didn't seem to notice the oncoming attack. Somewhere up on the bridge, the umpires would be watching the action.

A ripple of purpose moved through the company; they didn't need a shouted order. They all knew their business. Sweeney and Hooper's platoons swarmed up the embankment, and suddenly that "dash and verve" General Gale had complimented them for didn't seem so foolish. A Company would _have_ to have speed, daring, skill, and luck to storm and take a bridge rigged for demolition.

Hooper's platoon tore across the bridge, Sweeney's men right behind them. Bursts of gunfire ripped the night.

"Move!" Brotheridge called and charged.

Peter hefted his Sten and rushed the embankment after his CO.

It was the chaos of every battle he'd ever been in, but so much larger.

It had only been a few seconds and there was smoke everywhere. With the sounds of thunder-crackers exploding all around them, Peter brought his gun up and jumped onto the road. Firm pavement, better footing, he ran forward, crowded by the others – Parr, Gardner, Bailey and the others were all at his back and elbows.

There was shouting. He recognized voices from his Company and heard another language – surely the enemy. But in the dark and smoke, he couldn't tell where to shoot or who. Heedless, around him, men were running forward and firing into the smoke. Peter held back, figuring all they were doing was hitting their own people. Staccato bursts erupted from down the embankment on the other side of the bridge. Acting before he even could think it, Peter pulled out a smoke bomb and tossed it into the haze on the bridge's far side. Gunfire from that direction had to be enemy and if it wasn't, he'd just killed half of Sweeney's platoon.

There was a colossal BANG, so powerful the bridge shook.

"Shit," Gardner said next to him.

"What the hell?"

Gunfire crackled behind them and Peter dove to the ground, dragging Parr and Gardner with him.

"What's…."

They heard shouting, in English.

"It's the other platoons coming up behind us," Parr said.

"Goddamnit, we're caught between 'em."

There were umpire whistles, shouts, more whistles, and the gunfire and crackers slowly stopped.

"The fuck it is!" Lieutenant Hooper was screaming. "It wasn't!"

Peter lifted his head from the gravel and pushed his helmet out of his eyes.

_Damn._

A burly Sergeant, with umpire markings on his jacket and helmet, was shouting back at Hooper. "You and your platoon, sit down, Lieutenant! The Bridge is blown! You and all your company are now in a million bloody pieces or in the river!"

Parr swore under his breath and climbed to his feet.

In less than five minutes, they'd failed.

Hooper and the staff Sergeant were still yelling at each other. A second argument erupted on the other side of the bridge. Peter could see now in the light of torches that the "enemies" were the Polish paratroopers brought in for Operation Mush. That explained the foreign language. The Poles were arguing with another umpire.

"Blown! Gone! Boom!" The umpire was screaming. "The bridge was blown!"

The Poles screamed back. _"Nie!_ ," presumably _"No,_ " which was, Peter recalled from the Professor's language instruction, a universal invariant.

"No! No!"

 _"Ne angel-ski!"_ Peter thought he heard. _"Ne angel-ski!"_

"What the hell are they saying?" Bailey asked.

"Probably something like 'I don't speak English,'" Peter said, accepting the hand up from the ground Gray gave him.

"Goddamned bridge is blown and those Poles did it," Parr muttered. Tossing down his gun, he strode forward, waded into the scrum of arguing Poles, and slugged one of the biggest ones in the jaw.

"Plough the row!" Gardner cried. One of the Poles hauled back and landed a beautiful punch on Parr. "Can't let the boss do this alone."

Peter dropped his gun onto the road, joined Gardner, and they threw themselves into the brawl with the rest of the platoon. Guns went down with a clatter and fists went up. The umpires were frantically blowing their whistles, but he didn't care. They'd failed the mission, he was angry, and lots of Poles were going in the river tonight.

ooOOoo

"Let me look at you one final time, Jeanne."

Madame Vion made her stand and slowly turn around in her office so she could inspect every thread and hair from every angle. Whenever Susan felt impatient with the scrutiny, she remembered that there was a reason Madame Vion had not been picked up in the _Centurie_ network sweeps. The inspection before every trip into Caen was tedious but she would not complain.

"Good," she said simply, completing her examination. From Madame Vion, "good" was high praise.

Madame Vion turned to her desk and next carefully examined the empty medicine bottles Susan would take to the chemist and _Centurie_ contact in Caen. The chemist's bottles were made of heavy, dark glass. Around each bottle were hand printed instructions for the medicine that had been tied to the bottle with string. Two of the bottles, identical in all other respects, contained rolls of film. Using her handbag camera, Susan had photographed the Canal and River bridges and all their new fortifications. They assumed the RAF was providing aerial photo reconnaissance but England needed ground level views as well.

Susan showed Madame Vion the bottles with the film. Madame adjusted the written instructions just so and straightened the string tie on one. "Good."

With that approval, Susan carefully set the bottles with the film in the wooden box and then the other bottles on top of them. She tucked straw between the bottles and in the corners so they would not jostle and break on the bicycle ride to Caen.

"Do not eat or drink with anyone, Jeanne. Try not to speak with anyone who is French. You are very good but we take no risks. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Madame." Again, she chafed under the restrictions, but Susan had to keep her eye on the goal. They could not risk being caught and revealing the level of surveillance on the bridges.

She carried the box down the long marbled and tiled hallway of the hospital. It was quiet that morning; only one woman had come in the previous night and delivered another German baby.

Susan could not be as critical as some were of the _collaboration horizontale_. Women in England risked disease and pregnancy for a bit of chocolate and stockings from the Yanks who at least had access to condoms even if they didn't use them. The French had nothing. There was a difference between those who actively aided the Nazis – the informants, the horridly brutal young thugs of the Milice – and those who were simply doing what they could to survive. It was easier to agitate for resistance from the comfort of London. She had not yet determined where to draw the uncertain line.

Monsieur Desvignes, ever the gentleman, opened the front door for her. She liked Madame Vion's kind, gentile accountant very well.

"Thank you," she said and he followed her out the door and helped her settle the box in the basket of her bicycle.

"Good luck."

"And you, Monsieur."

Desvignes looked so careworn. He should have been enjoying the close of a successful career and holidays with grandchildren at the seaside. Instead he and Monsieur Lebourgeois had been ceaselessly moving materiel that had arrived by Lysander from England. They were stuffing the ambulance with guns and explosives and delivering them to the Maquis St. Claire and other cells. The Allies were looking to the Resistance to take out key bridges and railways and to harry the German reinforcements that would mobilize for a counter-attack against any Allied invasion.

The invasion _was_ coming. They could all sense it in the warmer weather and increasingly urgent and numerous _messages personnels_. But when? Which full moon period – for it would have to be full moon for the pilots. At which dawn would the Allied force come ashore? Where would the stroke fall? Pas-de-Calais? Normandy? They were all anxious.

It was over eleven kilometres to Caen. The chemist was near the Bon Sauveur convent hospital in the center of town. Susan could manage the trip at a good clip, there and back, in a few hours, assuming no problems.

Today was not a day for _no problems_.

The early spring weather was warm, not too hot, just light and bright. It was a welcome respite from all the gray and mud. It would have been a fine day for cycling if Susan had been able to actually ride on the road instead of constantly veering off into the ditch to make room for the many tanks.

Monsieur Lebourgeois had helped her create a clicker on her handlebars that let her keep track of things she counted. After counting six tanks – they were Panzer IVs – Susan wondered if she was cycling into the middle of a _Heer exercise_. She pulled to the roadside to wait for another column of ten tanks and a wing of ME 109s flew overhead and methodically zigzagged across the sky. It was strange to see that dreaded fighter craft of the Luftwaffe again after the Battle of Britain and she shuddered inwardly. They were providing aerial cover, she supposed. For what?

Another column of Panzer IVs rumbled by, stirring up dust and gravel. They were accompanied by a mounted anti-aircraft gun, probably a Flakpanzer. The clicks on her handlebar counter increased to 28 tanks.

This was not a mere exercise. A large fighting group of tanks, maybe even an entire division, was taking up positions around Caen. Though, why were they not heading north to the beaches at Luc-sur-Mer or Ouistreham, which was where an Allied landing would surely come? Why here, twenty kilometres away, which was too far inland to repel a landing force?

The traffic slowed a few kilometres from town and Susan realised they were in a queue for a checkpoint. She slowed on her bicycle and finally stopped as a solider waved her to a stop. She dismounted and walked the bike, resisting at every step the urge to open the box and fiddle with the bottles. Her hand went for a moment to the button sewn in her blouse and the cyanide tablet hidden there, making sure it was secure and safe. It was macabre, but she never went anywhere without a method for ensuring her own death.

Sometimes the checkpoints were cursory and conducted by rough, surly privates.

This was something else entirely. A gate blocked the road into Caen. At the roadblock there were several armored cars and a tent. The operation was manned by crisp staff sergeants, smart-looking privates, and a young, clean cut _Leutnant_ overseeing it all. To the side, there was a staff car with officers of even higher ranks, with binoculars, making notes on clipboards as the tanks were waved through the checkpoint. Another Me 109 buzzed overhead and the pilot dipped the plane's wings in salute. The officers were sporting an insignia she had not seen before – a yellow capital D with a line through it. Two Panzers, also IVs, guarded the checkpoint; the soldiers lounging on the turrets were wearing the same badge.

Practically no one was driving now since there was no petrol and it was so difficult to keep the wood burning vehicles running. But there were dozens of people, mostly women and a few old men, on bicycles and several horse and mule driven carts. They all waited as the soldiers methodically checked each person's identity card and poked about the carts and looked inside bicycle baskets.

Jeanne-Louise Lambert let out a deep breath and settled deeply into her role. It was natural to be nervous. Everyone was nervous. The people waiting were speaking to one another quietly, warily watching the soldiers and the tanks. Susan kept to herself. The bicycle tyres crunched on the gravel road as she moved slowly forward in the queue.

The difference between these men and the garrison at Bénouville could not have been starker. She spotted decorations on pressed uniforms that signified veterans of North Africa and the Eastern Front. These were not conscripts. These men were hardened professionals of the _Wehrmacht_ who had been fighting and, until very recently, winning all over Europe and North Africa for years.

They did not seem nervous or hostile, as if they were looking for someone in particular. It was, she felt, a routine and very professional checkpoint. She looked carefully for Gestapo or anyone out of uniform who appeared to be assisting, such as a member of the Milice who would be listening carefully for faked accents and mannerisms that betrayed someone to be a non-native spy. She saw only professional military men, which was itself daunting.

The elderly woman ahead of her was passed through with only a cursory look.

"Papers please," the soldier said, in heavily accented, awkward French. From his insignia, Susan inferred he was a _Feldwebel_ , a Sergeant.

"Yes, here, sir," she replied meekly and handed him her card.

The supervising Lieutenant looked over the Sergeant's soldier at her identity card and then took it from him. He held it up to the light, turned it over, and studied the markings.

"Your name?" the Lieutenant asked. His French was very good with the same Alsatian accent of Thérèse Gondrée.

"Jeanne-Louise Lambert, sir," she replied, steady and deferential.

"What are you doing so far from home in Caen?"

"I am the niece of the administrator at Château de Bénouville, sir. It is the local women's hospital. I was studying nursing before the war and now help there."

The Lieutenant handed her card back to the Sergeant. "Make note of it!" he said. "This is what a proper card looks like."

"And where are you going?" the Lieutenant asked, now scrutinizing her bicycle. His eyes fell on her counter on the handlebars and he gave her querying look.

"To mark the time and distance as I cycle, sir. And I am going to Caen, to the hospital's chemist."

The Sergeant was also looking her over in a professional way, probably seeking telltale bulges under her clothing that could conceal a weapon or explosives. "What is in your basket?" he asked. Like the Lieutenant, he was polite, but firm.

"Bottles for the chemist to fill, sir." She lifted the lid off the box so he could see inside.

"And what will they be filled with, Mademoiselle?" the Lieutenant asked. "Explosives? Illegal petrol?"

"Oh no, sir!" Jeanne exclaimed. "The hospital needs more medicines made up for our women patients!" She looked around nervously and dropped her voice so that only her two interrogators might hear. "They need relief for their feminine complaints." She picked up one the bottles from the box and showed them the label. Whispering, Jeanne said, "See, sir? It says _To be taken as needed for pain and severe bleeding caused by monthly…"_

As Madame Vion predicted, the horror at the prospect of information about a woman's menstrual cycle was enough to stop the most determined Nazi interrogator cold.

"Yes! Enough!" the Lieutenant said, pushing the bottle away. "Thank you, Mademoiselle. Please, put it away."

The Sergeant was not so shocked and looked amused by the younger man's discomfiture. From the quirk of a smile in her direction, Jeanne suspected the older, but more junior, solider was married.

"Sorry, sir," she muttered and put the bottle back in with the others and closed the lid of the wooden box. "I will just be on my way with your permission."

The Sergeant handed her back her identity card and Jeanne tucked it in her pocket again. Again she felt that he was watching her carefully for anything that shouldn't be on her person.

The Lieutenant was in charge, but the Sergeant was no fool, either.

"Will you be returning this afternoon?" the Lieutenant asked, his normal colour returning.

"Yes, sir," Jeanne replied.

"Perhaps we will see you again." He gestured and stepped out of the way. "You may continue."

"Thank you, sir."

"If you have difficulty, tell whoever questions you that Lieutenant Becker and Sergeant Müeller cleared you. We will not let it be said that we prevented women from receiving their medical care."

"Thank you, sir."

ooOOoo

_Though we are distant,  
our souls are together.  
They journey far beyond  
our existence,_

_Keep me in your mind,_   
_as I keep you in my heart._   
_They fly together,_   
_when we cannot._

_Ettin 3 2 3 4 6 7 1  
Together. Journey. Existence. Heart. Fly. Distant. _

A=T, B=J, C=E, D=H, E=F, F=D…

_The 21st Panzer has taken up positions around Caen. Estimate strength at over 100 Panzer IV's. Includes many veterans of the Afrika Corps. Under command of General Feuchtinger a veteran of Battle of the Somme._

_The 125th has taken positions east of Caen. Commanded by Von Luck. Very highly regarded by local garrison. Veteran of Poland, France, Eastern Front and Africa. Reported very close to Rommel._

_Garrison NCOs say 21st is Rommel's favourite division; 125th is best equipped in the whole Corps. They are in very good spirits._

_Rommel has ordered flooding of the fields in the area west of the River Dives to disrupt paras. Allied paratroopers landing in the area may drown._

_Garrison CO Schmidt feeling pressure. Only seeing girlfriend once a week._ _Has cleared buildings near Canal Bridge for clearer lines of sight._

_All construction completed at both bridges. Ditches and razor wire complete. Anti-aircraft gun and sandbag nests in place. At Canal Bridge anti-tank gun installed in concrete pillbox._

_Both bridges are rigged for demolition in anticipation of assault. One garrison solider said, "The bridge will explode the minute any enemy boots touch it."_

_They are ready. Every day of delay gives them another day to prepare._

_Rat_

* * *

To follow, Chapter 5, To War, D-Day minus one month to D-Day minus one hour and 44 minutes.

* * *

An enormous thanks to Ladyofthelight101 and Clio for the poetry.

The descriptions of D Company's exercises and the Operation Mush exercise, including the mock blown bridge, the argument between Lieutenant Hooper and the umpire, and D Company's fistfight with the Polish paratroopers tasked with defending it are taken from my Pegasus Bridge source material. It emphasizes that D Company was a bunch of troublemakers with lots of drinking, smoking, and swearing. The swearing is taken from General Patton's D-Day speech, and so is slightly American-ized for the average British Tommy enlisted man (RO). However, given that D Company has been fighting with the Americans stationed at Tidworth over girls in the Salisbury pubs, I'm assuming they picked up their language there.

The medicine bottles, the contact in Caen, Lieutenant Becker, and Sergeant Mueller are all invented. Rommel's visit to the Caen Canal bridge is memorialized in photographs.


	5. D-Day minus One Month to D-Day Minus One Hour, 44 minutes, To War

**Chapter 5  
To War  
D-Day minus One Month to D-Day ** **Minus One Hour, 44 minutes**

* * *

**D-Day Minus One Month**

Major Howard had sent Lieutenant Brotheridge to exert a good influence. Their platoon leader lost that ability about eight pints ago. The man had a lot on his mind and Brotheridge was absolutely…

Peter nudged Parr. "Boss, what's the word I should use for drunk?"

Parr looked up from his own pint. "Who you callin' drunk?"

"Danny." To his face, he was always "sir," "Lieutenant," or "Mister Brotheridge." Behind his back, the platoon called their leader, "Danny."

The sniper squinted at the swaying Lieutenant at the corner table. "Looks about rat-arsed to me."

"Arseholed," Gardner offered, hiccupping.

"Bladdered," Gray said, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.

Brotheridge's voice rose above the noise of the smoky pub. "We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break up into little pieces like that."

The Sergeants he was drinking with all laughed and toasted him.

"What the hell is he…?"

"That trout was plaster-of-paris," Peter finished the quote and laughed.

The others all stared at him.

"From the book? _Three Men in a Boat? To say nothing of the dog?_ "

Blank, glassy looks.

"I'll just shut it again and drink my pint," Peter said.

Bailey laughed and slapped him across the shoulder blades so hard he nearly upended his beer. "It's cuz it's about boats. That's how you know it."

"Pevensie don't know arse from elbow, but he does know boats!" Parr said hooting.

"I hate boats," Peter said. "Really, I hate them. I really hope we won't have boats wherever we're going."

"We'll find out soon enough," Parr said with a shrug and put a boot up on an empty stool. "It's coming. The Major has our orders. He knows what we're doing and where we're going."

"Why doesn't he say something?" Peter asked, taking another long pull on his cigarette and then snuffing it out. He hated them, hated how they smelled, and how they made it hard to draw a full breath. Getting through the Army without them had become unthinkable. He tried to limit how many he had and how often because they were too much like the syrup of poppy their Narnian physician had sometimes been too free with.

"He can't," Parr replied. "My guess is the Major's been bigoted. The orders are so secret he can't tell anyone else yet. And that means they probably come from really high up, General Poett and General Gale, maybe even Monty and Eisenhower above them."

"We are training for a special purpose," Major Howard had told them a few weeks ago. The second front was coming – that was all it could be and COSSAC had given D Company some special purpose in it. Command had done so in spite of the bridge blown during Operation Mush. Since then, they had been training for days over two strips that were supposed to be bridges, 550 yards apart. They trained and trained until they couldn't stand it anymore, bored to death and getting stale, stupid, and destructive.

So, Major Howard brought them here, to Exeter, in sealed up trucks, all 180 of them, 6 platoons, plus the sappers. For six days and nights they had been taking, retaking, and taking again two bridges over the River Exe and the Exeter Canal at Countess Weir. One platoon, two platoons, all six platoons, one bridge, two bridge, red bridge, blue bridge. Over and over. Fighting, shooting, smoke bombs, thunder-flashes and grenades. They had shaken the stones from the bridges and tiles from roofs. They'd blown fish right out of the water – good eating, too. Peter had been learning the basics of the sappers' jobs, how to defuse bombs and detonators, how to go hand over hand under bridges. All terrific.

But then Major Howard had gone and made them put together boats and launch them. And every time they had launched a boat, Peter had gone into the River Exe.

"I just really hope the orders don't have any boats," Peter said.

"Oh come on, Pevensie, you're still swearing like your mother is listening," Gardner said.

Parr smacked his hand to his forehead in a gesture of despair. "You're shaming my teaching, Pevensie. Say, _I hate those goddamned mother fucking boats._ "

The problem with having learned to drink on Lightning and tequila and then the steady practise over the last year in Wiltshire pubs was that Peter really didn't get especially drunk. And as for the cursing…

"Someone shorter and hairier than you, Parr, told me either swear like a soldier or don't swear at all." He raised his glass and drained it. "And I was always better at the drinking. And the buying." Peter stood and collected the empties off the table. "I'll get the next round. Oh, and Parr?"

"Yeah?"

"At least I'm not swimming across a river with a Bren gun."

Peter knew when to make an exit because Gray and Gardner started yelling again. Major Howard had wanted two men strong enough to swim a canal carrying a machine gun. Parr had volunteered Gray and Gardner for that job and they were still furious about it.

By the time Peter got back to the table, the others were putting out their cigarettes and shoving away from the table. It was going to be a lot of beer to drink by himself but everyone took a pint and drank it quickly.

"Where're we going?" Peter asked.

"One of the goddamned Yanks from the supply depot stole Jones' girl," Bailey said.

"We'll need you to launch 'em," Gray said, pulling on his sleeve.

"Always glad to oblige." Peter quickly drank the rest of his pint and followed them out. This was, after all, a matter of national pride.

Peter had gotten a reputation in D Company as a man who never threw the first punch, but could be counted on to throw the last. He was the one to toss the enemy into the nearest ditch, canal, or stream. He started over the last year by learning to throw poaching Yanks out of Salisbury pubs, for distance. During all the training exercises, he'd perfected the toss of a struggling Pole or para over a railing into the waterway below. He did always make sure they didn't drown. The townspeople throughout southern England thought they were all hooligans, but a man just didn't take another soldier's girl like that. Though, Peter had to admit he didn't have very high opinions of the girls, either. He knew there must be women who weren't solely interested in the crown of Narnia or whether Private Pevensie had a chocolate bar, but really he'd not met many of them in his life – both of them.

The night air was bracing, windy and cool.

"There," Gray said, pointing at a group of Yanks loitering across the street.

"If the Yank stole Jones' girl, how come he's still there?" Peter asked, reasonably, he thought. "Wouldn't he be with the girl and not with his mates over there?"

"There you go again, Pevensie, thinking too much," Parr said. "Leave the thinking to your elders and betters."

"Don't matter anyway," Bailey said. "If they've not taken a Tommy's girl, they will."

Gardner and Gray charged forward, fists flying at the Americans, shouting "ABLE ABLE ABLE!"

After the problems with telling friendly from foe in Operation Mush, Major Howard had each platoon yelling a call sign during battle. Brotheridge's platoon was "ABLE," Lieutenant Wood's platoon was "BAKER," Smith's was "CHARLIE," and so on.

"ABLE ABLE ABLE" had become their platoon's war cry.

Peter waded in after them, ducking the throws of an American private who looked like he was about sixteen. Peter picked the boy up by the shirt and belt and dumped him into a refuse bin. The next man was bigger, meaner, and his fist connected with Peter's stomach and it was going to hurt when the beer wore off. On his way up from doubling over, Peter hauled back and landed an upper cut that sent the Yank sprawling onto the ground.

"Where the hell are you going?" Parr yelled as some of the boys from Fox's platoon ran by.

"Give us a hand!" Bailey hollered, shaking loose of a Yank who had him around the middle.

"Can't stop!" one of them called back over his shoulder. The lot of them disappeared down a side street. Shrill police whistles coming after explained why Fox's platoon was running and what they were running from.

Jones showed up and it was about time since it was his girl. Jones was always better with starting the mayhem than the actual fisticuffs, proving it when he tried to throw a rock at a burly sergeant, missed, and smashed a window.

It looked to be a proper brawl. The Exeter police came and broke them up just as Peter threw the last of the Yanks in the canal and just before the Yanks' friends showed up. As the platoon was climbing into a truck, with police escort, Peter saw Major Howard and Captain Priday guiding Danny into a jeep. Brotheridge was still quoting from _Three Men in a Boat._

Goddamnit he hated boats.

* * *

Dusk was just beginning to fall when Susan wearily pedaled up the drive to the Château. She wanted a warm bath with salts, a bottle of good wine and… roast chicken, fresh fruit and crusty bread with soft goat cheese would be lovely.

Instead… Well, there would be wine. Maybe some peas and early beans from the garden. Some corn bread if Madame Vion had been able to find it. A soup made from a handful of dried beans and a piece of pork. There was hardly any food. Thank goodness the occasional drop by Lysander included tinned meat. No Frenchmen or Frenchwomen would deign to eat Spam, but it was that or no meat at all.

With a sigh she removed her constant companion, her wooden box, from the bike basket and trudged into the hospital.

She nodded to the duty nurse and went down the hall to Madame Vion's office.

"Welcome back, Jeanne," Monsieur Desvignes said, coming out of his office. "Any problems? Do you need help with the box?"

"Thank you, but it's fine." Susan immediately felt guilty for complaining even to herself. Madame Vion's accountant was much older and working very, very hard.

They all were.

"Let me get the door for you, at least. I'll tell Madame Vion you are back from the chemist."

"Thank you."

Susan went into Madame Vion's office, set the box on the desk, and rubbed her sore neck. A glass of wine would be nice, so she took two glasses and poured a white from the Loire.

The click of heels on the marble floors meant Madame Vion's return.

"Welcome back, Jeanne!" Madame came forward and kissed her on both cheeks. "All went well? You are later than usual."

Susan handed her "Aunt" a glass of wine.

"I was stopped at the checkpoint coming back."

"But no difficulties?"

"No," Susan replied, savoring the crisp white's citrus flavours. "Quite the opposite. Sergeant Müller showed me pictures of his wife and children and practised his weak French. He and Lieutenant Becker gave me some batteries. They are in the box."

"Batteries are always useful, especially for the wireless."

Susan was just sitting down on the sofa as Madame Vion opened the wooden box. "And it seems not just batteries!" Madame exclaimed.

"What is it?" She hurried to the box and looked inside.

"Oh."

There were three batteries in with the now filled medicine bottles from the chemist. There was also a nosegay of little pink and yellow flowers.

"It seems you have an admirer in Lieutenant Becker, Jeanne."

Susan sighed and gingerly removed the now slightly wilted flowers from the box. "I suppose I can put them on the hospital floor for the patients?"

She had long since exorcised herself of any guilt regarding the unsought-for attention of admirers. With the exception of Rabadash the Ass, none of her former suitors had been in the army of a nation at war with Narnia. And look how well _that_ had ended.

"Will you get your head turned by a few flowers, Jeanne? Will you end up like so many of our patients?"

"Absolutely not, Aunt."

Madame Vion looked at her carefully but she would not find the shy blush or stammer of Susan Pevensie. Queen Susan the Gentle, Susan Caspian, and Jeanne-Louise Lambert had no difficulty managing male attention and had no conflict whatsoever.

When she found in Susan's countenance what she sought, Madame Vion nodded and sighed. "I am sorry, Jeanne. You are a pretty girl. You should be enjoying this time. Not…" She waved her arm around the office vaguely.

"I have no regrets, Madame. None." How could she explain that this was what Narnia had trained her to do? That she felt the Lion's purpose in everything she did here? She had been courted by Kings and Lords; she had been loved and respected by a worldly man of great wealth and gentleness. She already had the heart of a Wing Commander in England. What could a Lieutenant in the 21st Panzer give her that she had not already been offered before, and rejected? All her personas and identities had learned to look beyond the generous gift, the shy token, and the flowery praise.

She put an arm around Madame Vion and kissed her cheek. "Nothing will be a greater reward than to see France liberated and nothing will turn me from that goal. But…"

Madame Vion arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Yes?"

"If Lieutenant Becker or Sergeant Müeller would see fit to provide food occasionally during my stops at the checkpoint, I would not refuse it."

Madame Vion raised her glass. Susan did as well. "Santé."

"Santé."

* * *

They had been so certain it would come with the full moon period in May. June? Surely the first week of June? There had been hundreds of _messages personnel_ over Radio Londres. They always began with the first four notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, dot-dot-dot-dash, V in Morse Code, V for Victory.

Everyone whispered it would be Pas-de-Calais. But then why such interest in the two little bridges 11 kilometres inland from the Normandy beaches?

With a sigh, Susan swerved around another pit, stood on the pedals and pushed harder. She knew every rut on the road between the Château and Café Gondrée. The route from Bénouville to the Caen chemist was similarly memorized. The advantage to the repeated trips, day after day, week after week was that no one stopped and questioned her anymore. At the Caen checkpoint, the very helpful Lieutenant Becker and Sergeant Müller were slipping food in her box every day. Sergeant Müeller helped make small repairs to her bicycle and found a new tyre for her and a chain. The flowers from Lieutenant Becker also continued to appear. Susan sent all of them upstairs for the patients to enjoy.

Susan was able to move about Caen unnoticed and even after curfew, all for the benefit of the patients of Château de Bénouville and the German babies the women birthed there. The first few times she was searched and questioned, but all the soldiers ever noticed were her medicine bottles labeled for treatment of lurid feminine complaints. At this point, she could pedal through a checkpoint with a basket full of plastic explosives and no one would stop her.

The real danger in being out after curfew was getting hit by falling bomber debris. It dropped out of the sky so regularly, no one was perturbed at all by the frightful noise.

It was getting dark just as she pulled up to the Gondrée Café. She could not see the bridge well, but there would be guards on it. When she could, Susan tried to come in the early evening. The garrison soldiers were sometimes more glib and Madame Gondrée overheard more. If Susan picked up the news in the evening, she and Madame Vion could code it overnight and get it to Caen the next day. Or Susan would transmit short urgent messages via Madame Vion's wireless during her standing w/t "date" with Tebbitt the next afternoon.

As soon as she pushed open the door, carrying her trusty box of medicine bottles, she sensed something off in the Café. The soldiers were rowdy and loud. She saw Madame Gondrée look up from where she was setting a tray of beers on a table and her eyes told a story that sent Susan scurrying to the back kitchen.

Monsieur Gondrée was washing up and whirled about so quickly at her entrance he nearly dropped a soapy glass. "Jeanne! Thank goodness!"

"Is Madame not feeling well?" she asked loudly, setting the box down on the counter.

"It has been a terrible day for her!" Monsieur Gondrée put the glass aside, hurriedly wiped his hands on his apron and shut the door, dimming some of the noise.

"Thérèse heard them," Monsieur Gondrée said softly. Susan nodded and made much of banging the box lid about and jostling the medicine bottles so that they clacked, adding a chorus to the German singing on the other side of the door.

Whispering under the din, he said, "Thérèse heard where the trigger is for the explosive charges under the bridge."

Susan stared at the humble Café owner and father of three little girls.

Monsieur Gondrée glanced back at the door but only noise came through; there was no Gestapo agent on the other side.

"Thérèse heard the soldiers say that the trigger that will blow up the bridges is in the pillbox they just built, the one with the big tank gun."

"And if the pillbox is taken out, they can't blow the bridge?"

Monsieur Gondrée nodded.

Both their hands were shaking as they put the empty bottles back in the box.

"Thank you," Susan said to him. "You and Thérèse both. Thank you."

"I am not a brave man, Mademoiselle."

"But you are, Monsieur, you _and_ your wife. You are as brave as Lions."

* * *

They'd gotten used to the bouncing and jouncing around inside a closed lorry. Major Howard had given them the order to pack up and move out. Might this be the last stop before deployment? The lorry's tarpaulins were all tied down to keep them secret and out of sight. They'd been bumping over roads for over an hour, heading south.

The sounds of planes outside got louder.

"RAF base," Parr said.

The truck slowed and stopped. A guard gate, probably. There was some discussion Peter couldn't hear. The truck started moving again and finally stopped and the engine cut out.

"Fall out!" Major Howard called.

They all clambered out of the truck, blinking a little in the spring sunshine. Looking around, Peter saw the patrols and the barbed wire and the harried look of all the men running around. It was _finally_ coming. And they were part of it.

"Look up," Brotheridge said, pointing.

A big Halifax rumbled overhead towing a glider.

"It's a Horsa," Brotheridge said.

The men all craned their necks up, staring at her. She was beautiful, long, sleek, and larger than the Wacos they'd trained in by at least a third.

"How big is she, sir?" Peter asked.

"Enough for a platoon," Brotheridge replied. "30 men, give or take."

They checked into the section tents. There was the usual roll call, jostling over bunks, shoving and yelling. They were confined to base, and everyone was on edge, waiting for the summons.

The officers disappeared with Major Howard. For once no one had much appetite and the food was still terrible.

Peter tried to get to the NAAFI for a pint, but the queues were too long with all the pilots and staff. They found out they were at Tarrant Rushton, in Dorset, that the base was relatively new and primarily for the glider corps.

No one wanted to miss the summons that had to be coming, so they hung around the stuffy tents. It was hot and he nearly burned a lung on all the cigarettes. Peter lost a week's pay and five hands in a row to Parr, Bailey, and Gray. Parr was probably cheating, but he didn't care. Gardner had a dice game going and was making out as well as Parr. Maybe Gardner and Parr could buy them pints at the NAAFI.

The order finally came. He heard Lieutenant Wood shouting "Fall In!" to the tent next door with Sweeney's platoon. They were all on their feet, charging double time out the door to beat the other platoons.

There was a lot of jostling to be first. They were marched across the base into an area cordoned off by barbed wire. Peter whistled and Parr nodded as they saw that the briefing hut they were going into was surrounded by wire and guards.

"This is big. They've got inner security even though we're on a closed base."

They cursed and shoved but Peter knew how to use his bulk to clear a path. It got even more crowded when the sappers joined. After throwing a few elbows and smashing a few insteps to get in, Peter wasn't sure what he was expecting. He knew he hadn't expected _this._ This was deadly serious. The officers were all excited, high colour, wide eyes. Major Howard looked relieved and in better spirits than he'd been in weeks. It was probably the first time he'd been able to share the orders with his subalterns. Other units surely weren't getting anything like this. They had been told so many times they were special and now, seeing the inside of the hut, he realised that it was true. D Company was very, very special.

The walls of the briefing hut were covered with maps, photographs, and aerial reconnaissance. In the front, on a dais, was a model, about twelve feet square. Peter pushed his way closer to it for a better look. The model was incredible in its detail. There were little ditches and trenches, fortifications, barbed wire, trees, bushes, and buildings. In the middle, two strips of blue ran the length of it. They were waterways, and over them, two bridges, connected by a single, straight road.

It was just as their Exeter exercise had been over the Countess Weir bridges, in a 12X12 model, except this wasn't England.

Everyone jostled for seats; Peter stuck to standing on the side, where he could see better.

"Welcome to RAF Tarrant Rushton," Major Howard began. "We're officially on lockdown, men. We won't leave here again until the night of the 4th of June when we fly out." He paused. "We'll leave in six Horsa gliders. The Halis will tow us across the Channel and we'll prang into Normandy, France at midnight on the 5th of June."

There were scattered, startled oaths, some loud over the din of each man exclaiming to his neighbor. The hum of excitement intensified. Peter was shocked himself. That was barely a week away!

Major Howard tapped the model with a birch pointer and the conversation quieted. "Our objective is two bridges outside the French city of Caen, connected by a road and 550 yards apart. The bridge on the east spans the River Orne and the one on the west is over the Caen Canal. They have been rigged for demolition and are protected by a garrison. The pilots will land the Horsas at the bridges, we prang out, engage and defeat the enemy, take the bridges, _intact_ , and hold them until reinforcements arrive."

Now, mutters and swearing rose from the Company. "Intact?" Peter heard. "We're going to crash six gliders into German-occupied France? Us and what Army?" "They'll blow 'em and us with 'em."

Major Howard rapped the pointer. "We will be the first Allied unit landing in France. We will see the first action. Behind us will be the largest invasion force the world has ever seen."

Into the stunned silence that followed, Captain Priday spoke. "D Company will be followed by parachute and glider landings, and massive air attacks and naval bombardments. A 12,000 plane assault will soften up Nazi defenses in anticipation of amphibious landings on the morning of 5 June. At dawn, over 150,000 Allied forces will land on over 50 miles of beach."

Men in the room whistled. This was enormous. Larger even than the Torch landings.

At the map of France, Major Howard pointed again. "The far right flank of the invasion is here, at the Douve River Estuary. American forces will land along this stretch of coast to Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes, named Utah and Omaha Beaches. Moving east, Canadian and British forces will land in three separate operations, ending at Ouistreham. Ouistreham is the far left flank of the invasion and is less than four miles from the Caen bridges we must capture."

"Supporting the British landings on the left flank will be over 8,000 paras of the 6th Airborne whose objectives are to stop the panzer divisions around Caen, take out the Merville gun battery, and demolish four bridges over the River Dives. Our orders are to take and hold the Caen Canal and River Orne bridges. Our relief is expected by noon on 5 June when Lord Lovat's commandos will march inland from the beach landings. If we fail and the Germans blow the bridges, we and the entire 6th Airborne will be in the middle of enemy territory, at the mercy of Rommel's panzers, with water to our backs, no anti-tank weapons, and no way to get them."

"Any questions?"

There were of course and the Company and the sappers began moving about the briefing room, looking at the models and photographs and asking questions of the subalterns. Peter was pushed toward the map of the French coastline. There were five codenamed beaches labeled with LZs and which divisions and brigades from which Army would land where. Utah and Omaha beaches for the Americans were, as the Major had said, at the western flank. The Canadians and British 2d Army would be landing at Gold Beach, Juno Beach and…

He stared.

_Oh Aslan. You were right and I am sorry to have ever doubted you._

"Something wrong, Pevensie?" Lieutenant Brotheridge asked.

His heart was thudding but he didn't want his platoon leader to think it was nerves.

"No, sir. Excited, sir, that's all. Could you tell me, our objective, it's to protect the easternmost beach, where the British 2nd is landing?"

"That's what the Major said, Pevensie. Our job, and that of the paras of the 6th, is to protect the eastern flank. There are two panzer divisions around Caen, which will be problem enough. The rest of the armor is to the east, since Hitler has assumed we're taking the shorter distance across the Channel and landing at Pas-de-Calais. If a serious counter-offensive comes, it will come first at those two bridges. If we and the paras of the 6th don't stop them, they'll roar down on to Sword Beach and wipe out the British landings."

Peter put a finger to the map pinned to the wall and traced the word. _Sword Beach. Sword._ And of the four LZs on Sword Beach, one was codenamed _Peter_ ; the other was _Queen_. At Gold Beach, one LZ was codenamed _King._

"Don't get a swelled head because one of those sectors has your name on it."

"I won't, sir." But there was meaning here, too. High King Peter had been known as the Sword and Soul of Narnia. The sword had been his gift, his talisman, his banner, his code name, and handle to the Cair Paravel staff.

One of the sappers was asking Brotheridge a question about how the bridges were rigged for demolition and what the plan was to take out the Canal Bridge's pillbox fortification that housed the trigger. Now that the model was there for them all to study, Peter appreciated anew just what Major Howard had been doing to them. They'd been pranging a replica of those damned bridges for weeks.

He pushed through the crowd, leaving the coastal maps for others to see and went to look at the pictures of the area. The closest town was Bénouville. There was information on the local café owner and others in the area who were active in the French Resistance. There was detailed information about the fortifications at the bridge, where the trigger was that would detonate each bridge, and the strength and competency of the conscripts manning the bridges.

Parr and Bailey jostled him. They were looking at photographs of buildings near the Caen Canal bridge.

"That's the Gondrée Café and the big building is Château de Bénouville," Major Howard said. "It's a hospital. The administrator is in the Resistance; so are the Gondrées. British intelligence has agents in the area supporting them. They are why our information is so good."

"Those buildings are prime spots for snipers," Parr said. "Lots of tree cover, too."

"And in the water tower," Bailey added.

There were several intelligence reports from British intelligence available as well. Peter looked at one about Rommel's recent visit to the bridges. It was succinct and competent. He was just going to leave it and look more closely at the floor model when he spotted something that was so small, he almost missed it. In the bottom corner of the report, there was a tiny, pencil drawing of a black, four-legged creature – surely a rodent – a rat. He had seen this particular drawing before.

 _Susan._ The sword had been his totem, and the rat had been hers. As he had touched the word _sword_ on the map of the Normandy invasion, now he gently ran a fingertip over the little picture. At Sword Beach there was an LZ named _Peter_ and one named _Queen. Susan? Are you there, in France, in Normandy? Are you giving us the intelligence that will bring D Company into Bénouville on glider's wings?_

Peter thought so. By Aslan's will, Rat and Sword were at war.

* * *

**D-Day Minus Two Days**

It had been a late, long, painful night. Two deliveries, one a still birth. Susan had been asked to help with the details of bedding, towels, laundry, and medicine. Lebourgeois had brought one patient in and then he and Desvignes headed out again to meet a Lysander. In the ambulance they had hidden a downed American pilot. Madame Vion had hidden the pilot and treated his broken arm. The Lizzie brought more guns and would return to England with the American. Lebourgeois and Desvignes had not returned until the weary hour before dawn, having seen to the delivery of guns to a Resistance cell south of Caen.

A good night, a productive one, and very, very long. The Lysander pilot had given them a few gifts. Susan was grateful but with all the Stens that were pouring into France from England, couldn't someone manage to include more than a tin of NAAFI tea, a can of SPAM, and a bar of soap?

They had caught a few hours of sleep and now were getting a late start to the day.

"Thank you, Jeanne," Madame Vion said as they sipped their plain, weak tea.

The French considered the English uncouth tea drinkers but they had not seen coffee in months. For elevenses , they were sharing German sausage in Madame Vion's office. The fare was tedious, but a benefit from their good relations with the 21st Panzer, Lieutenant Becker, and Sergeant Müeller was that food had been coming regularly in addition to the batteries and flowers as she bicycled through the checkpoint.

"Will you go to the Café next?"

"Yes, Aunt, if I can be spared," Susan replied.

"For assuring Madame Gondrée's continued health, you can always be spared, Jeanne."

"Thank you, Aunt, I will do so then."

Even when alone and casual, they always tried to maintain the cover. _Always live the cover._

Susan ruthlessly cut the sausage on the plate and forced herself to eat it. In a month, the Wehrmacht would be gone from Normandy, surely. Dead, imprisoned, or in retreat, including the generous Lieutenant Becker.

In the hall, there were sounds of hurried, echoing footsteps. Madame Vion looked quickly about her office as Susan stashed the tea fixings in a cupboard. The sausage could be explained.

The subterfuge, however, was not necessary.

Monsieur Desvignes hurried into the room escorting a winded Monsieur Gondrée. It seemed he had run the two kilometres all the way from the Café.

"I apologize for interrupting, Madame, but…"

"Nonsense, Monsieur! For you, always! Please sit."

With a nod from Madame Vion, Susan shut the door on the four of them as Madame Vion asked, "Madame Gondrée? Is she well? Do her problems persist?"

Monsieur Gondrée had not even changed out his apron. Susan removed a medicine bottle from a cabinet. He might need it to explain his absence from the Café and unusual visit to Château de Bénouville.

"Thérèse overhead the soldiers this morning as we were opening," Monsieur Gondrée said. "The soldiers were complaining." He gasped for a deep breath of air then blurted out, "They are under orders to dig holes to plant _Rommelspargel_ at the bridge."

They lost precious moments staring at one another. And then, they all moved at once.

Monsieur Desvignes sprinted out of the office and up four flights of stairs to where they hid the w/t. Susan chased after Madame Vion to the pharmacy where they hid the crystals for the wireless set. Susan tucked them in a handkerchief in her bodice.

They met Desvignes at the door and loaded the heavy radio into the basket of her bicycle.

"You don't have time to code a message before you must send to England at noon," Madame Vion said.

"I won't code it," Susan said. "I'm going to a farmer's field outside of Ranville. Hopefully it has not been flooded yet."

It was less than four kilometres. She might make it by noon. She might find a safe place to radio in broad daylight in a countryside crawling with German soldiers. She might think of a message between here and there that would tell Tebbitt of the deadly peril of the _Rommelspargel_ , Rommel's asparagus. She might be able to warn them before any operation launched. She might be able to do all that, and not get caught.

"Jeanne!" Madame Vion said, running after her just as Susan was pedaling away.

Susan stopped the bicycle. "Yes? Madame, what? I must…"

Madame Vion glanced at Susan's front, at her blouse and put a finger on the hollowed button sewn there. "Do you have it? Do you have the pill? If you need it?"

"Yes," Susan managed. "I have it. If I need to, I will use it." Susan was wearing the means of her own suicide – the cyanide tablet she never left the Château without.

Madame Vion kissed her cheek. "Then go! Swiftly!"

ooOOoo

Tebbitt could feel the urgency at the other end. She was sloppy. There was no special password, like _Dryad, Ettin,_ or _Tashbaan_ to begin the message. There were no numbers. This meant she was, against all sense and precaution, sending an uncoded message. He listened and recorded the dots and dashes and knew he could not ask her to repeat it.

"What is it?" al-Masri asked, hovering.

"Rat sent a _message personnel._ "

"Are you sure it is Rat?"

"It's too fast and inaccurate to be anyone else. If she'd been captured they would have done it accurately."

_askcrowwhyliluyedied_

Ask/crow/why/liluyedied

Ask/crow/why/liluye/died

"What does that mean?" al-Masri asked. "Did you set up a fallback code?"

"Yes," Tebbitt said, standing and grabbing his coat. "Call Tarrant Rushton and tell them we have new intel and are working to decode it. Major Howard will need to know and the glider command. I'll call RAF Benson and tell photo recon to get another plane in the air and over those bridges."

"And Rat's message? What about that?"

"We're driving to Reading to speak to Crow."

ooOOoo

Two officers – one Army, one RAF – roaring up the front drive of Blackpool Forest School on motorbikes made nearly every head in the place stick out a window. He and al-Masri jogged up the steps and Tebbitt hoped his garbled message had gotten to the right person and that they would not have to wait while Edmund Pevensie was located on the pitch, in the pool, or in the bowels of some underground laboratory. Every memory of public school, the pleasant and the rotten, came surging back.

A hawkish, sour looking man was waiting at the school's double door entrance. As a product of this environment, recognition was instantaneous. Tebbitt knew who he was without even asking.

"Headmaster Davies?" Tebbitt asked.

"Yes. Welcome to Blackpool Forest, Wing Commander." Davies eyes slid over al-Masri with that uncomfortable look people gave the man. It had come to be truly irksome.

al-Masri was thoroughly accustomed to it and always enjoyed discomfiting doubters. "I am Major al-Masri, British Army Intelligence, Headmaster. Thank you for accommodating us so promptly."

"No trouble at all. Just doing our patriotic duty. Mr. Pevensie is waiting for you in my office."

"Thank you," Tebbitt replied. "We shouldn't be long. We may need to use your telephone afterwards."

"Of course."

Boys were two deep along the dark paneled halls, all jostling for a look, as they followed the Headmaster. The place reeked of tripe soup and carpet dust. What miserable places these could be.

"Must be bad news," Tebbitt heard one boy murmur.

"'Course it isn't, you fool," replied a contemptuous American accent.

"Yeah, if it's bad, it's always a telegram. Like what happened to Darby and Reynolds last week."

Shabby curtains, shabby tapestries, claustrophobic feeling – was every public school the same?

They followed Davies through one door and then another and an anteroom.

"Here you are, gentlemen." Davies opened the door and for Tebbitt it was a sudden, disorienting step back some fifteen years in time to the Headmaster's office of his youth – dim, dark, threadbare carpet and a smell of stale spirits.

Edmund Pevensie rose from an overstuffed, fraying wing chair with massive clawed legs. He had the damnable poise of his sister and had obviously come to the same conclusion as the boys in the hallway. Pevensie knew this was a crisis, but also knew it wasn't a personal tragedy that had brought two officers tearing across Berkshire on motorbikes the first week in June.

He reached out a hand to al-Masri first. "Major, it's a pleasure to see you again."

"Mr. Pevensie, may I introduce you to Wing Commander Tebbitt whom you know by excellent reputation but not in person?"

Tebbitt sensed that Pevensie's reaction to him was not as warm as to the Major. Possibly brotherly protectiveness of his sister?

"Why don't we all sit down," Davies began.

"Thank you, Headmaster, but you'll have to leave," al-Masri said immediately. "You are not cleared for this discussion."

"Cleared?" Davies repeated with a startled glance at Pevensie. "And Mr. Pevensie is?"

"Yes," al-Masri said. "We won't be long." The Major held open the door, projecting the perfect air of indifference, efficiency, and authority.

Pevensie didn't crack an expression until Davies blustered his way out the door and al-Masri shut it firmly behind him.

"I have wanted to say that to the old fool since I came back from the States," Pevensie said with a laugh. "I would love to get caught up and learn more but obviously time is critical. What can I do for you?"

Tebbitt removed the slip with Rat's message but before he could speak, al-Masri put in, "Mr. Pevensie, you are still bound by the Official Secrets Act. You must not speak of this to anyone. Do you understand?"

Pevensie nodded. "I signed a non-disclosures here and in Washington. I understand."

"Good," al-Masri answered. "Don't forget it."

Damn the man could be cool.

"Before your sister was deployed, we agreed that should circumstances warrant, she could use your private code," Tebbitt said. "If I couldn't understand it, I should come to you."

Tebbitt would swear this impassive, serious person was not a fifteen year old adolescent. But Rat had been this age when she'd fooled everyone into believing she was Mrs. Susan Caspian. al-Masri had said there were no rational facts that could explain the Pevensies. Tebbitt had certainly never found any.

"Here," he said, handing the scrap to Pevensie. "And I hope to God you understand it."

Pevensie took the paper, scanned it, and handed it back.

"Can you tell us what it means?" al-Masri asked.

"I can tell you what I think it means. How it applies to your situation, I obviously do not know."

"The best you can, Pevensie, that's all we ask, and she wouldn't have sent it to me and to you if she didn't think we'd get close to the meaning."

Pevensie nodded. "I agree, of course. Susan wants me to tell you about how a Gryphon named Liluye died."

"Gryphon?" Tebbitt repeated. "Like in mythology? Like the gryphon that pulls Beatrice?"

"Also _Alice's Adventures,_ " al-Masri said, sounding uncommonly dry.

"Yes, that sort of Gryphon, with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion."

"What happens to her? How does she die?" Tebbitt asked.

"Liluye is wounded in battle. She takes arrows to the wing, is injured, cannot fly, and plunges into the Owlwood."

Tebbitt thought Pevensie looked awfully bleak for what was just a story. He supposed it was sad. "And?" he pressed.

"Liluye could have survived the arrow wounds. I believe my sister's point is that she did not because Gryphons are so very large and cannot fly in any area with heavy tree cover. When Liluye fell into the Owlwood, the trees ripped her wings off; she died impaled on a branch."

Tebbitt glanced at al-Masri, wondering if he was thinking the same thing.

"How do Gryphons fly?" al-Masri asked.

"Powerfully. They would launch from a height, if possible, but once airborne are terrific fliers."

"Do they glide?" Tebbitt asked.

"Yes," Pevensie replied. "They can sustain flight, of course, but are able to travel great distances by gliding on thermals."

With barely a thank you, they pelted out of the office like mad men; Tebbitt bellowed for the telephone to call the photo recon squadron at Benson and al-Masri was penning a telegram they'd run into town and send off to Major Howard and the glider corps stationed at Tarrant Rushton.

The Gondrées had learned that the Germans were installing _Rommelspargel_ , Rommel's asparagus – glider poles – at the Bénouville bridges. The glider poles were thick, strong pieces of wood buried in the ground. They would tear the wings right off an incoming glider. The Horsas would never even reach the bridges. They'd be shredded to pieces on landing and picked off by waiting Nazi guns. D Company would never make it out alive.

* * *

**D-Day Minus One Day**

"You're late," Parr whispered as Peter slid onto the bench next to him. The movie was _Stormy Weather,_ which fit given how wretched it had been. Goddamnit, would they abort the whole invasion because of rotten weather over the Channel?

"I had to pick a lock to let Fox and Smith off base," Peter whispered to Parr. "They went to dinner in town with their girls."

"We're on lockdown," Gray muttered. "You get caught, you won't be pranging into Normandy."

"I know," Peter replied, nodding his thanks as Gray handed him a light. "It's their business, not mine."

Fox and Smith had invited him along, said they could find a girl for him. Peter wasn't interested and Gray was right. Nothing was worth missing Operation Overlord, certainly not for the girls who were only interested if he had a chocolate bar. He was saving the ration chocolate for France.

"Don't be stupid. Major won't punish two of his platoon leaders until after the operation," Parr said. "Now shut it."

Peter took a pull on his cigarette. They'd all gotten an extra ration of Player's because apparently everyone thought they were doomed men. They were getting anything they wanted – except decent food. That would have been the one reason to sneak into town – to get a proper meal at a restaurant. But even that prospect wasn't enough.

Danny had said over a year ago that D Company was special and by God they were. First unit to hit French soil; first unit to see action. 150,000 men, five divisions, readying for battle all over England tonight and Peter didn't think they'd all been visited by Monty. General Montgomery had come to Tarrant Rushton, made the rounds, shaken hands, told them they were the best trained and the best equipped in the whole goddamned Army.

And then General Gale had come, just for them, and told them, again, how special they were and how important the bridges were to the whole of the 6th Airborne, and beyond that to the British and Canadian divisions landing to the west, on Sword, Gold, and Juno.

It'd been a gas. Windy Gale had known just what to say to rile them up. "The German today is like the June bride. He knows he is going to get it. He doesn't know how big it is going to be!" The men had all roared and whistled and stomped.

Peter leaned back on the bench, stretched his legs, which everyone always complained about, blew out a cloud of smoke, and let Lena Horne sing to him. The stormy weather had to let up. It had to be a go tomorrow.

* * *

**D-Day Minus Three Hours, 45 Minutes to D-Day Minus One Hour, 44 minutes**

The wind beat against the windows and sent a draft into Madame Vion's office. Susan poured glasses of rough red wine for the four of them.

"Thank you, Jeanne," Madame Vion said as Susan set the glass on the desk. Madame Vion was fiddling with the wireless for the Radio Londres broadcast. Susan knew she would be able to get the signal faster, but no one touched Madame's radio.

She gave glasses to Monsieur Desvignes and Monsieur Lebourgeois and sat down with a sigh between them.

"Thank you, Jeanne," Monsieur Desvignes said. His old, veined hand patted hers reassuringly. "I know you are impatient."

Monsieur Lebourgeois shifted a little on the couch and sipped his wine. "I do wonder if they'll be able to launch. The pilots need the full moon and we'll lose that soon." He glanced at the window. "And the weather over the Channel is terrible regardless."

"They've only landed before in good weather, so maybe next month," Monsieur Desvignes added, with a sigh as deep as Susan's own.

"The broadcast on the first of June said that it would be within two weeks," Susan reminded them. The broadcast had read the first lines of Verlaine's poem, _Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l'automne - Long sobs of autumn violins._ When they heard the next lines of the poem on Radio Londres, the invasion would be imminent. "We still do not know where, either. It could be hundreds of miles away."

She did not want to believe that given all the attention on the bridges. Susan had to be honest, though, that all this could easily be part of an elaborate shell game. A message on Radio Londres yesterday had said that "Rat made it home." She assumed that meant Tebbitt had received and understood her message about the _Rommelspargen._ Only that morning, the glider poles had been delivered and the holes dug. Slaves from the Todt organization would probably try to install the anti-glider measures tomorrow. She would need to get a message to Tebbitt.

"I have it!" Madame Vion cried. As delicately as if handling eggs or glass, she removed her fingers from the dial. There was an ominous crackle and then the telltale dot- dot-dot-dot-dash burst through, the first notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. V for Victory in Morse Code.

"And they are not jamming the broadcast!" Monsieur Lebourgeois cried, raising his glass.

"There have been too many for the Germans to jam," Monsieur Desvignes said.

"Shh!" Madame ordered, leaning against her desk and picking up the glass of wine.

 _"Et voici quelques messages personnel,"_ the radio announcer said, speaking in perfect Parisian French. _And here are some personal messages._

There were many, many messages. Susan knew the meaning of some, did not know others, and thought some might just be noise to confuse. She glanced at Madame Vion who nodded. There were many calls to action embedded here. All over France, people were being instructed to do things. Tonight, tomorrow, and soon.

Then, _les dés sont sur la table, the dice are on the table._   Madame gasped and they all looked at one another. It was the instruction to sabotage railway lines.

The tension rose in the room, they were so quiet and listening so intently.

The next, _il fait chaud à Suez, it's hot in Suez._ This was the instruction to attack telephone lines. Surely, it was coming? Finally? Would they hear the next lines in Verlaine's poem?

Was it her wistful imagination or was there a hint of excitement in the reader's voice? Was there the slightest pause as he then read, slowly and carefully, the waited for words,

_Blessent mon cœur d'une langeur monotone, Wound my heart with a monotonous languor._

A whoosh of air went out in the room upon hearing the long waited for lines of Verlaine's poem. They all hugged and toasted and shared handkerchiefs for they shed tears. It had begun. In the next 48 hours, the Allies would invade France.

* * *

The order had finally come. It was to be a day later, landing on the 6th, rather than the 5th, and it was still pissing rain. Word was that the RAF weathermen thought conditions were improving, not worsening. There was a window and Allied Command had decided to sail and fly over 100,000 men through it, rough seas and wind on the Channel be damned.

It was a go.

A lot of the men had gone to a church service. Peter didn't. Lucy and Eustace were right about that – Aslan could be in a chaplain's tent if he wanted, but it was a poor fit and there were other places where Peter felt closer to the Lion. He'd heard the Lion's roar in the wind and felt his kiss in the rain as he'd stood outside the barrack tent.

Lieutenant Brotheridge found him afterward.

"Light, sir?" Peter asked as Brotheridge ducked under the tarpaulin where he'd been watching the drizzle come down.

"Thanks."

Peter lit one cigarette from another and handed it back to his platoon leader. They were all smoking Player's like chimneys.

"I noticed you didn't go to chapel with the other lads," Brotheridge said in between puffs.

"No, sir."

Their smoke rings floated up and were washed away in the rain. They watched as a big Hali blotted out the sky. In a few hours their platoon would be aloft in Horsa Glider #1 and towed by a Hali all the way to France.

"Anything you want to talk about, Pevensie?"

"I'm fine, sir, but thanks."

He knew what Lieutenant Brotheridge was trying to do for him. He'd done it himself, before battles, trying to encourage his own army. Peter saw the same anxiety in the men of D Company that Brotheridge did. They were committed and eager, fit and hard, but not hardened. They'd become soldiers but Peter thought he was the only who'd killed before.

The men had thought it was all show when Major Howard made them sharpen bayonets. Peter didn't think so and at the same time, he'd sharpened the knife Major al-Masri had given him so long ago on a train platform in Oxford. The knife was beautiful and perfectly balanced. The men called it fancy. Peter knew, in the way a warrior did, that the knife had cut human flesh before. By dawn tomorrow it might, by Peter's own hand, make a desperate killing cut at a man's flesh again.

So, while other men might go to church and pray for life and nerve, Peter had gone into the Nissen hut where the operation was all set out, right down to where on the 12X12 model the glider poles were to be planted that could kill them all. He'd idly twirled the knife in his hand and looked again at the Allied maps of Normandy hanging from the walls – Sword Beach and Gold Beach – and in the landing sectors – King, Peter, and Queen. He saw the Lion's purpose and that was all Peter needed.

He and Brotheridge both flicked ash away into the mud. "It's not good for a man to go into combat hoping for death, Pevensie. It's not good for him. Not good for the rest of us who're counting on him, either."

"I'm not looking for death, sir. I've got a good life and family waiting for me when the War ends. But I'm not afraid of death, either. I'm ready to fight and to kill and even die, if that's the way of it."

With Edmund or Lucy, he could have said what they had all known, that death was an old friend of theirs, both delivering it and risking it to do a duty that needed doing.

Brotheridge looked him over and blew out more smoke. Finally he said, sounding resigned, "It's easy for everyone to forget but you're still young, Pevensie. I should have sent you packing instead of one of the others. You should still be in school, or OCTU, not here."

"Thank you for letting me stay, sir. I won't let down D Company, or the mission. I belong here. It's what I'm supposed to be doing."

"So long as there aren't any boats?"

"I'll just send Parr in that case."

Brotheridge clapped him on the shoulder. "You're a good man."

A bugler called them to mess for a light, low fat meal so that maybe the Major wouldn't get sick over the Channel. Hardly anyone ate, though. Well, Peter did. He knew if he didn't fuel up now, he'd regret it in another 12 hours, so he ate his portion and two others, too. The brotherhood abused him about it but the prospect of combat had never made him sick before, so Peter didn't think it would happen this time and he'd managed the glider well enough during training.

Sure, riding to war at the head of the Narnian army wasn't the same as pranging onto a bridge rigged for demolition with 75 other men and then, assuming they weren't blown to bits, holding it in the middle of the 21st Panzer Division while over 100,000 men came ashore and dropped around you. The end result was the same, though. When the time came, your training and commitment to the cause would take hold and each man would find the will to kill. Or he wouldn't. You didn't know until you were there and had to do it.

Peter knew he could. He had before.

After eating, they'd suited up and gotten the battle smocks. Brotheridge had handed out some fun things that Peter thought were better for morale than anything else – a makeshift compass out of a button, a file sewn into the smock for daring escapes, a silk square with a map of France, water purification tablets, and some French francs.

They'd heard the Yanks had gotten condoms and real chocolate.

The weigh in was nervy. The glider pilots were only allowing 250 pounds per man, which depending on your own weight, could be over 100 pounds to carry. That wasn't a problem for Peter – he was tall and solid and could have carried a lot more, but the glider couldn't. Some of the littler chaps were sagging at the knees and if they fell over, they'd be like turtles, unable to get up again under all that weight.

They'd been driven out to the Horsas to help with the loading. In short order, most everyone in the platoon had lost their French francs to Gardner's dice and Parr's cards. Peter figured the two of them cheated together and split the winnings. If anyone in the platoon found (and had time for) French whores or wine, Parr and Gardner would have to pay for them.

They passed camouflage paint around and blackened their faces and hands. It was a little gooey and reminded Peter that maybe Susan was already where he was going.

Then, they waited.

"Hold the light up, Pevensie."

"Sure thing, boss." Parr had a piece of chalk and was writing his wife's name on the nose of the Horsa glider. _Lady Irene._ Irene was Parr's wife.

The other five platoons were writing special messages to Hitler on their Horsas. There were shapely ladies like Jane in the cartoon, Donald Duck, and the names of many women – mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends. All the planes, including the gliders and the Hali bombers that were towing them, were painted in Operation Overlord fancy dress – white stripes on the wings and tail.

"You wanna write anything, Pevensie?" Parr asked, straightening up and dusting chalk off his hands.

"That's all right. I'll leave room for the others."

"It's a big glider." Parr shoved the chalk at him. "Go on."

Peter tried, but he knew it was hopeless before he'd drawn the tail.

"What the hell is that?" Gray asked, coming up with his own chalk and a mug. "A dog?"

"A cat, or… never mind." Peter tried to rub his feeble attempt out with his sleeve but Parr held him back.

"Leave it."

He shrugged. They were all making too much of it and he wasn't going to explain it.

Parr turned toward Gray, sniffing. "What you got in that mug, Gray?"

"One of the NAAFI girl's got a Dixie with tea." Gray tilted his head over toward the aft of the plane.

"With rum," Peter said, catching a whiff of it.

Gray raised his mug. "Nothing finer on a cold, rainy night."

He got an elbow in the ribs from Parr. "Let's go get some."

Peter let Parr drag him to where the rest of the platoon was hanging around the Dixie, smoking, drinking and eating sandwiches in the drizzle.

Parr was getting two cups, but Peter shook his head. "I'll skip the rum, thanks."

He got squint-eyed looks from Parr and Gardner for that one.

"Pevensie turning down a drink?" Gardner said. "I don't believe it."

"I hate rum," Peter said. "Really. Rum reminds me of goddamned motherfucking boats."

The Halis were warming up, the glider pilots were getting into the cockpits.

Everyone on the platoon did the Jimmy Riddle as Parr called it, except Gray. Gray was going to regret it after all the tea and rum. Peter'd learned _that_ lesson in armor.

Major Howard gathered them around on the soggy field. They did look a fright, faces all blacked out, each carrying 100 pounds of gear, or more, guns over their shoulders, bandoleers across their chests, toggle ropes around their waists, grenades in the pouches.

"Well, boys…"

Major Mad Bastard began his speech, floundered, and finally gave up. Great leader, rotten inspirational speaker. It didn't matter.

Parr boomed it out and they all started chanting along, "Ham and Jam! Ham and _bloody_ Jam!"

 _Ham_ and _Jam_ were the codes for mission success, if they took each bridge intact. _Jack_ and _Lard_ were if the bridges were taken, but blown. Peter hadn't heard if there was a code for mission failure, bridges blown, D Company dead or captured.

Chanting "Ham and Jam," everybody shook hands. Then, it was time. Their platoon climbed into Glider 1; Peter wedged in between Gardner and Gray, who already looked uncomfortable. Glider 1 would crash first into the Caen Canal Bridge; assuming they weren't lost or shot down by flak, gliders 2 and 3 would be one and two minutes behind them. Gliders 4, 5 and 6 would assault the River Orne Bridge.

In the glider, they all hooted and hollered as Danny Brotheridge took his seat up at the front. Major Howard was saying something outside to their Hali pilot, then, since he was the last to come aboard, had to push and climb over their bodies and gear to take his seat on the bench next to Danny. At least there was no goddamned motherfucking boat in their glider.

The Hali's engines roared and revved and the bomber began rolling down the runway. A moment later their Horsa jerked and followed, pulled along by the tow cable.

5 June, at 2256, they were airborne and D Company was headed to France. Sword was going to war.

* * *

The conclusion, Chapter 6, The Longest Day, follows

* * *

I did not learn until after I'd committed myself to writing the story, that Sword Beach was the flank D Company and the 6th Airborne were to protect, or what the names of the landing zones were. These sorts of coincidences happened frequently in the story.  Here is a [map of the beaches and LZs](http://members.shaw.ca/junobeach/images/juno-3%20D-Day%20Overlord.jpg).

Virtually everything here is true, save for Susan's interactions at the checkpoint. The exercise at Exeter and drunken behavior nearly did get all of D Company thrown in jail. Major Howard convinced the Chief Constable, a World War 1 veteran that it was eve of combat nerves and no charges were pressed. Brotheridge did used to quote from Three Men In A Boat. Fox and Smith did sneak off base to see their girlfriends - they did not, when recounting the escapade to Stephen Ambrose, remember how.

A map of the bridge area is [here](http://pics.livejournal.com/rthstewart/pic/0002at68/). 

The quotes of poetry and other messages over Radio Londres are recounted in numerous sources, including the film, The Longest Day. You can also see see pictures of the 6th Airborne and the Ox & Bucks getting ready to depart on the evening June 5. There are links in my Live Journal to pictures of the men with their card games and dice, putting the camouflage on, drawing on their planes and gliders, and drinking from the Dixie.  Some of the pictures are [here](http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?95989-wwII-brit-paratroopers). 

Thank you for reading and I hope you will consider reviewing.


	6. D-Day, The Longest Day

**Chapter 6  
The Longest Day  
D-Day**   
  


* * *

 

**D-Day 0000 – 0016**

  
“Has the Major laid his kit yet?” Parr bellowed from the aft of the Horsa. Everybody laughed but, this one time, nobody had gotten sick.  
  
“How about this one!” Parr began singing again, leading all 28 of them in another song, to the tune of stamping, hooting, and in between chain-smoking Player’s:  
  
 _It's a long way to Tipperary,  
It's a long way to go.  
It's a long way to Tipperary  
To the sweetest girl I know!_  
  
Gliders 2 and 3 were one minute apart behind them, and the other three behind them. The stormy Channel was beneath them.  
  
Peter snubbed out the fag and hummed along. Glancing fore, he saw Major Howard reach into his jacket. He was probably carrying a good luck token. Most of them had something hidden away.  
  
Peter wasn’t carrying anything. He’d already seen the Lion’s paw in the battle plans hanging on the wall of that Nissen hut back at the base.  
  
 _Your will Aslan, not mine._  
  
Somebody knew the alternate chorus, and that one sounded even better:  
  
 _That's the wrong way to tickle Mary,  
That's the wrong way to kiss.  
Don't you know that over here, lad  
They like it best like this.  
Hooray pour Les Français  
Farewell Angleterre.  
We didn't know how to tickle Mary,  
But we learnt how over there._  
  
  
 _Hooray pour Les Français, Farewell Angleterre._ He was sitting far enough fore that he could just make out a strip of white beach and crashing surf.  
  
The glider suddenly jerked around them. Peter looked at his watch. It was 0007 and they’d cast off from the Hali. The drone of the bomber’s engine faded and with it, the song.  
  
They were alone, in the dark, and gliding into France. The only noise was the whoosh of air over glider wings, 28 men breathing and, from the cockpit, the co-pilot, Ainsworth, counting out by stopwatch.  
  
With a nod from Major Howard, Brotheridge shrugged out of his safety harness and stood. The Major and Sergeant Ollis grabbed Brotheridge’s gear and Danny leaned forward to open the glider’s door. The door slid smoothly back up into the roof and Ollis and the Major hauled Brotheridge back onto the glider’s bench.  
  
The clouds of Calvados passed below them. First man to prang out of the glider would win fifty francs. Peter didn’t know how anyone would be able to pay, since Bailey and Parr had won all their money.  
  
They were blind. Peter couldn’t see anything, not the Bridges, the river, the canal, not even the town of Ranville that surely they were flying over. Nothing. Wallwork was flying by compass, airspeed indicator and Ainsworth’s stopwatch.  
  
They all tensed and braced as Ainsworth suddenly said, “'Now!” Wallwork threw them into a hard, full right turn, which meant they were now heading west, over the River Orne.  
  
Peter heard Wallwork whisper something, sounding worried, but Ainsworth was an absolute brick. “Well, we’re on course, anyway,” Ainsworth said bluntly and loudly and then he began counting down, “5,4,3,2,1.” Wallwork threw them into another hard right turn, now heading north, in theory, straight up their landing zone, and straight into the Caen Canal Bridge.  
  
At 0014, Wallwork shouted, “Ready!”  
  
“Link arms!” Brotheridge ordered. “Feet up.”  
  
Given that the Horsa was made of plywood, glue and spit, the whole floor could disintegrate on a hard landing, which this surely would be. They were badly overloaded and probably still going over 100 miles per hour.  
  
Suddenly the clouds cleared the moon. The bridge was straight ahead and through the open door the trees were whipping by beneath them at 90 miles per hour.  
  
The Horsa dropped. Everyone tensed and the wheels slammed down, hard, ripping out dirt and sending rocks and turf everywhere. Surely, coming in this fast, they’d go straight over the embankment. But if they didn’t get far enough up the LZ close to the Bridge, gliders 2 and 3 behind them would run up their back and crush them.  
  
Wallwork yelled, “STREAM!” and Ainsworth hit the button and the great parachute billowed out behind them. There was a tearing sound and the glider lurched, probably losing wheels and skidding forward on the struts.  
  
Peter could feel the glider shuddering and shaking; it was breaking apart around them. What good was flying in silently when the glider landing sounded like a bomb going off? There was no surprise here. They were landing in the middle of German tank divisions and infantry garrisons. They were going to crash into a bridge rigged for demolition and defended by a tank gun, machine guns, and fifty soldiers.  
  
But they did slow. “Jettison,” Wallwork called and the parachute detached altogether.  
  
They bounced and banged down again and a cloud of sparks and fire shot out all around them.  
  
“Tracers!” someone yelled. They’d been spotted, they were being shot at and they’d die, still strapped into their seats.  
  
There was an almighty crash. Peter was flung forward, his head smashed into a strut and it all went black.  
  
  
ooOOoo  
  
They had been too excited to go to bed. They’d all toasted the success of the invasion. Then, Madame Vion turned off the radio and it was time to get to work. The invasion could come anywhere within two hundred miles or more over the next 48 hours. There were two separate jobs – the care of the patients and the work of the Resistance. They had to be ready for both.  
  
They filled all the basins with water, stocked batteries, and found the candles. Susan was folding bandages in the supply room with Lebourgeois when Desvignes came in.  
  
“Jeanne, do you hear that?”  
  
Susan listened, trying to tune out the clip of Madame’s heels on the floor as she joined them.  
  
“Low flying bombers,” Susan said. “They sound like Halifaxes.”  
  
“There aren’t any drops scheduled,” Madame Vion said, entering the room. “It is very odd.”  
  
“We’ve never had that many at once, either,” Lebourgeois added. “Could it be paratroopers?”  
  
“The invasion? _Here?_ ” Madame Vion asked sharply. “Not Calais?”  
  
Susan shook her head. “If they were dropping paratroopers ahead of an invasion, there would be more of them.”  
  
“So too many for a drop, that is not scheduled, and not enough for an invasion?” Desvignes asked. They all stood quietly, listening.  
  
“I think they are headed to Caen?” Madame Vion both said and asked.  
  
Susan set the bandages down. “We should go up to the roof.”  
  
“Would the invasion come so soon?” Madame Vion said as they hurried to the grand staircase. “The message came barely four hours ago.”  
  
They hurried up the stairs and the hum of the overflights grew louder. Madame Vion opened the roof door and they went out. In daylight, the Château de Bénouville roof gave a good vista of the whole area of Bénouville, Le Port, and Ranville, both bridges, and all around for several kilometres.  
  
Susan scanned the sky; it was very dark and there was scant light from the cloud-covered moon.  
  
“They _are_ moving toward Caen,” Monsieur Desvignes said, listening to the rumbles moving west. “I didn’t think there was much left to bomb there.”  
  
Flashes of anti-aircraft guns and tracers lit the sky of Caen, followed a moment later by the sounds of artillery. The bombers were beginning their run. Desvignes was right, though. There wasn’t much left in Caen. It was a very target poor city and what was there, the tank regiment, the Allies probably wouldn’t try to hit at night.  
  
A diversion? What had the – there had to be at least four – Halis dropped besides bombs?  
  
Unless… She shaded her eyes and searched the sky eagerly. “Look for something big, black, and moving fast. And silently.”  
  
And then the cloud rolled back and a huge shape cut across the moon, blacker than the night sky, slashes of white on its wings and tail, silent, like a huge Gryphon of Narnia, or a mythical dragon, but so much bigger. The sky above Bénouville was filled with these great, soundless things.  
  
Madame Vion gasped as the shape soared, silent and very fast, right by them on the roof, just on the other side of the canal, heading north.  
  
“It’s a glider,” Susan said. “Probably a whole…”  
  
And then there was a thunderous, exploding boom. Showers of sparks and flashes of fire burst from the ground just north of them, right at the Caen Canal Bridge.  
  
The glider had crashed within a few meters of its target.

* * *

  
 **D-Day: 0017 -0027**  
  
Peter blinked awake to the sounds of groans, which meant he could hear. Someone’s elbow was in his ear, and someone’s gun poked him in the ribs, which meant he could feel. Major Howard was jammed up in the roof of the glider and Peter couldn’t even see the pilots – they and their seats had been thrown out of the cockpit like stones in a slingshot.  
  
How long had they been out? Peter glanced at his watch which was miraculously still working. 0017. It felt much longer than a minute or two. No one said anything, but everyone was looking around, waking up, and that was that. They were rats in a trap. They had to get out or they would be killed where they sat, still strapped to their seats. What was left of the Horsa wouldn’t stop bullets or a mortar. And gliders 2 and 3 would be landing any moment, right on their tail, assuming they weren’t lost or shot down.  
  
There was jostling and muffled swearing and there was so much equipment in the way. But everyone was moving. The opened door was closest. Peter shrugged out of the harness, fell in with the other four of the brotherhood and hopped out. His feet hit French soil and barbed wire.  
  
The pilots had managed to run the glider on top of the barbed wire. There wasn’t anything for them to cut and break apart.  
  
He wondered who would win the fifty francs and if that person would be alive to collect it by morning.  
  
The east end of the Bridge loomed over their heads. It took Peter too long to realise the shocking fact.  
  
No one was shooting at them. There was no activity at all. The sparks had not been tracer bullets – they must have been caused by the friction from hitting the ground so hard and fast. Had they really managed complete surprise even with that god almighty crash?  
  
No time to question their incredible luck. Brotheridge motioned to Bailey. “Get moving.”  
  
Bailey and two others peeled off and headed across the road to the other side of the Bridge. They had to take out the pillbox with its anti-tank gun and the switch that would detonate the whole bridge out from under them. The rest of Glider 1 was to clear out the machine gun pits, trenches and barracks on the far, west, side of the canal. Glider 2 would come up behind them and clean up the east side. That meant he and his platoon had to cross the Bridge, not have it blow up under their boots, and make it across before being mowed down by the machine guns on the other side.  
  
Brotheridge was leading.  
  
Their five sappers were already sliding down the embankment. Even if Bailey couldn’t blow up the triggerman, the sappers would hand-over-hand under the Bridge and remove the charges and cut the explosive wiring – assuming the whole thing didn’t first explode into so many pieces there wouldn’t be anything left of their platoon to send back to England.  
  
“Come on, lads,” Brotheridge whispered. Peter hefted his gun and began running for the Bridge, following Danny, Parr and the rest of his team.  
  
They rushed the Bridge, guns at the hip, still meeting no opposition, when there was the sound of another crash and bang in the LZ. Glider 2 must have just touched down. A shot echoed behind him.  
  
Peter kept going, faster.  
  
Surely that would wake up the enemy? Two gliders crashing into the Bridge? Gunshots? Someone was sitting with a finger on the trigger. The bridge could go at any moment, he’d never know it…  
  
And then there was the thud and bang of grenades. Bailey and his team had just killed whoever was inside the pillbox and taken the trigger with ‘em.  
  
Peter felt a surge of adrenaline and heard beneath him, under the Bridge, not crackles of fire and detonations, but the sounds of the sappers knocking charges into the water.  
  
 _This just might work._  
  
A lone sentry emerged on the Bridge. The child turned to face the twenty of them who emerged out of the dark like avenging angels, with blackened faces and bristling with weapons.  
  
The sentry yelped and ran, calling, _“Fallschirmjager!”_  
  
Now, Peter saw another guard on the Bridge. The guard pulled out a pistol, shouted, and shot off a flare that lit them and the Bridge.  
  
Hell opened up.  
  
Brotheridge shot the sentry with a full clip. The man fell.  
  
Fire erupted from the pits on both sides of the Bridge and they were running straight into it, Brotheridge leading. They kept going, running, dodging machine gun bursts right and left. Peter felt something whiz by his cheek and he hoped it didn’t find a home in one of the men behind him.  
  
Brotheridge pulled out a grenade and tossed it into the machine gun pit on the north side. Gardner and Gray lobbed grenades into the trenches on the south side. The Sten steady at his hip, Peter pulled the trigger and sprayed bullets, low, into the smoke of the pits.  
  
There was a new burst of fire. Peter was already running by it and he remembered now the sound he’d not heard since Narnia – the sound of a fast moving, hard projectile hitting soft flesh.  
  
It wasn’t his own and he kept moving.  
  
Parr charged left with Gardner and Peter followed. Their job was to take out the bunkers on the south side. From behind, Peter heard “ABLE ABLE ABLE” and that meant Bailey was running across the Bridge with his men to join them. There was no need for silence now; they had to avoid blue on blue and killing their own. They all took up the chorus, shouting “ABLE ABLE ABLE,” and ran off the Bridge. Parr exploded, “COME OUT AND FIGHT YOU SQUARE-HEADED BASTARDS.”  
  
His mind registered a low courtyard wall he had seen in the model back at Tarrant Rushton.  
  
More answering shouts of “CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE,” which meant Number 3 glider had landed and Smith’s team was tearing across the Bridge to join them.  
  
“Come on,” Parr said, pointing with his gun. Peter nodded and followed him and Gardner to the bunkers where the Germans were living, sleeping, and where they would die.  
  
“You alright?” Parr asked.  
  
“Let’s go,” Gardner said, already moving to the bunkers.  
  
“Fine, boss,” Peter said, appreciating what Parr was really asking. They’d already seen a few of their fellows slinking off or staring ahead blankly, unable to do what even the very best training could not teach – the will to kill another man.  
  
There were more shouts, the sound of a grenade going off, and windows breaking.  
  
“I throw in an egg, you shoot anything still moving,” Parr said.  
  
“Got it,” Gardner replied. Peter nodded.  
  
The bunkers were dug into the embankment, parallel to the Canal. They ducked into the first one. Parr yanked open the door, tossed a stun grenade into the bunker, and slammed the door again. They heard shouts, panic, and an ear-shattering bang. Peter threw open the door and he and Gardner sprayed bullets into the smoke and fire.  
  
There was a low moan. Peter fired off another round into the bunker. It went silent.  
  
They moved to the next.  
  
And then to the one after that, throwing a grenade into the dugout, and shooting the men who survived.  
  
The three of them came back up above ground hearing “ABLE ABLE ABLE” and “CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE.”  
  
“We’re supposed to meet Danny at the Café,” Parr said. “We’re setting up the command post there.” They trotted across the road. They met up with Lieutenant Smith and his Lance Corporal in front of the Café.  
  
The flesh on Smith’s right hand was a bloody mess and torn to the bone. “That bastard did it with a potato masher,” he said, nodding toward a German soldier, dead, slumped over the low wall. Potato masher was their slang for a stick grenade. “At least my trigger finger works.”  
  
They heard noise above them, from inside the Café. Smith raised his gun and fired a round into the building, shattering the window.  
  
Peter remembered the Café’s owner was a member of the Resistance who had told them where the trigger was for the Bridge. He hoped Smith hadn’t just killed the man.  
  
“Where’s Danny?” Parr asked, looking around. It was near impossible to see through the smoke from the phosphorous bombs.  
  
“Haven’t seen him,” Gardner said.  
  
“Not since we came across the Bridge,” Peter said.  
  
With a muttered oath, Parr took off, running around the Café. “He must be here somewhere.”  
  
There was another burst of gunfire from the pits across the road. They all ducked and Gardner lobbed a grenade into the trench.  
  
“Cut that out, Gardner!” Parr yelled. “Don’t throw another of those bloody things. We’ll never see what’s happening.  
  
From the other side of the canal, there were more bangs, smoke, and shouts of “BAKER BAKER BAKER,” the codename for Wood’s platoon. Number 2 Glider was supposed to take the east side of the Bridge and clear the pits and trenches.  
  
In the momentary lull, Peter allowed himself to think the incredible – _had they done it?_ The Bridge wasn’t blown. Was there any opposition on it left? The creeping elation was a feeling he remembered well – in the confusion of battle, you concentrated on one enemy after another and lost the view around you. You had no way of knowing if you won until there was nothing left to kill.  
  
Parr and Bailey appeared out of the smoke, carrying a limp body between them.  
  
 _Oh Aslan, no._  
  
Peter jumped forward and helped them move Den Brotheridge over to the modest protection of the courtyard wall.  
  
Their Lieutenant had taken a bullet through the neck. He was staring up, glassy-eyed; blood was everywhere.  
  
Peter knew a fatal wound when he saw one.  
  
The man had a baby coming any day now who would never know her father now.  
  
From the Bridge and on the other side they heard shouts of “Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam.”  
  
Peter looked at his watch. 0026. In barely ten minutes, they had control of the Caen Canal Bridge. Gliders 4, 5, and 6 must have taken the River Orne Bridge, intact.  
  
 _Ham and Jam. They’d done it._  
  
Den Brotheridge was dying.  
  
  


* * *

  
 **D-Day 0026-0600**  
  
They’d all run downstairs for helmets and dark clothing, then dashed back up to the roof, staying in the shadow of a wall, trying to learn what was happening by sound alone. Allies were attacking the Caen Canal Bridge. Had they attacked the River Orne Bridge, too? They didn’t know.  
  
The din from the Canal Bridge was terrific. There had been one crash, an explosion, a flare, and then two more crashes and shooting. Mostly Stens and Brens, Susan could tell from the sound. There was some German fire, MG 34s and Schmeissers, but not much. This meant, she hoped, that the British – she assumed they were British from the guns and not American or Canadian – had quickly obtained the upper hand.  
  
There was shouting too, over the staccato bursts of machine gun fire.  
  
“What are the saying?” Madame Vion asked, pushing her too-big helmet out of her eyes.  
  
“I think they are call signs for recognition,” Susan said. “‘ABLE, BAKER, and CHARLIE’ so they recognize each other from enemy in the dark. There are probably three platoons down there.”  
  
“Did they do it? Did they take the Bridge?” Lebourgeois asked. He had a pair of binoculars they were taking turns using but it was too dark to see anything but the flashes of fire.  
  
“I’ve not heard anything sounding like the Bridge exploding?” Desvignes said, both question and statement.  
  
“Jeanne?”  
  
“I do not want to raise our hopes, but I think we would know what an explosion of that size would sound like.”  
  
“And then there is whether they can hold the Bridge they seized,” Desvignes said ominously.  
  
Susan nodded.  
  
Taking the Bridge was one thing. The Caen Canal Bridge garrison was weak and ineffective, mostly foreign conscripts who probably ran at the first sign of trouble. Major Schmidt was in Ranville tonight with his girlfriend. It was the counter-attack that they needed to think about now. Two regiments of the 21st Panzer were out there, surrounding the Bridges to the east and west, and the most capable, Von Luck’s 125th, was only a few kilometres away.  
  
“Surely there must be reinforcements coming?” Lebourgeois said.  
  
New shouts rose from the Caen Canal Bridge. “What is that?” Madame Vion asked.  
  
Susan listened closely. “Ham and Jam?” she repeated, in both French and near forgotten English. “I don’t know what that means. More code phrases, probably.”  
  
Desvignes sharply inhaled. “Listen!”  
  
It was the unmistakable sound of bombers for the second time that night. This was low, loud, and growing louder. And not the few of before. Dozens, scores, a hundred, bombers were in the sky above Bénouville, probably C-47s and Stirlings from the engine noise. They were all flying low, maybe 125 metres, the altitude for parachute drops. East, across the Caen Canal and River Orne, toward Ranville, flares lit up the sky. Allied pathfinders were lighting the way and signaling drop zones for incoming paratroopers.  
  
Sirens came on instantly and searchlights in every village clicked on. Tracers and anti-aircraft mortars rocketed into the sky, brilliant, terrible, killing streaks of fire and light. Yellow, orange, and red lights split the black night and illuminated men dropping from the sky and floating down on parachutes. The scope, the size, the breadth was incredible. The sky was full of criss-crossing bombers and fire, and in the midst, gently falling paratroopers of what had to be an entire division.  
  
For the first time, Susan considered the incredible. Peter was in the Glider Corps, in the paras of the 6th Airborne. Could he be among the hundreds of men now invading France?  
  
“There are your reinforcements, Lebourgeois,” she told the old man.  
  
In a night of strangeness and uncertainty, another new sound split the night. Someone at the Bridge was blowing a whistle, Dot-Dot-Dot-Dash. V for Victory.  
  
She smiled. “Those are British paras,” she said, confident that only an Englishman would be blowing “V for Victory.” “The whistle is their locator, to help orient them and bring them in to the rendezvous.”  
  
How many though would make it? There were hundreds of paratroopers blotting out the night sky east of them. And many of them would die. How large was the DZ? There was so much danger. There was nowhere safe to land out there.  
  
Echoing her thoughts, as he often did, Desvignes said, “Rommel flooded the fields between here and the River Dives; there are patrols everywhere. They may never make it.”  
  
“We should go, try to find them, bring them in,” Lebourgeois said.  
  
It was insanely dangerous. They could as easily be killed by German as by touchy Allied in the confusion.  
  
“Take the ambulance,” Madame Vion said. “Wear red cross armbands. Take rope, torches, do what you can. Notify the others in the network, if you can find them.”  
  
“The paras are probably supposed to meet at the Bridges. Direct them there and how to follow the whistle.”  
  
Dot-Dot-Dot-Dash.  
  
Susan kissed both men good-bye. _Aslan watch over you, my brothers._  
  
The lights and sirens created an incredible spectacle. The paras were so vulnerable. They could be dead before they landed or could land in a tree, a well, or a flooded field and die without ever being free of the chute. Still, after so long, they were not alone. The Allies were coming. The Allies were here.  
  
There was an ominous, clanking roar, not of aircraft, but of heavy treads on a road.  
  
“Tanks!” Madame Vion said. “In Bénouville, heading toward the Canal Bridge.”  
  
“The 21st is on the move,” Susan said grimly. “They are going to counter-attack and try to retake the Bridge.”  
  
ooOOoo  
  
Peter was camped out in an abandoned machine gun pit on the west side of the Bridge. He could hear the dreaded rumble of German tanks on the road between Bénouville and Le Port. He had his grenades all lined up, his Sten, and plenty of ammunition, but none of that would work against a Panzer. They needed the Piat, the platoon’s anti-tank gun, or a gammon bomb.  
  
From the pit, they did have a good line of sight. They were a little elevated, sheltered by the Bridge and the darkness, and could see straight ahead to the crucial road juncture, 30 yards away. Any armour the Germans threw at them from the west, and he could hear it coming, had to come through this bottleneck first. Any armour coming from Caen to the beaches would have to pass through this same T-junction. The paras were dropping all around them and with Major Howard tooting that infernal whistle, their reinforcements should be arriving any time. Until then, D Company could probably pick off whatever came at them, assuming they weren’t rushed and overrun by an overwhelming force.  
  
“ABLE ABLE,” came a voice behind him and Gray jumped into the pit with him.  
  
“Goddamnit,” Gray muttered.  
  
“What? Any word on Brotheridge?”  
  
“Dead,” Gray said flatly.  
  
To the many he had known who were already gone, Peter silently asked, _My Friends, welcome a good man among you who will be sorely missed._ With the ease of much practise, he shoved his grief aside for later.  
  
Gray lined up next to him in the pit, pulling out his gun and setting it on the sandbag. “All three Lieutenants on this side are down. Danny’s gone and Smith and Wood are both injured. And we’ve still not heard from Captain Priday and Hooper’s platoon.”  
  
Glider 4 was supposed to be at the River Orne Bridge. “So the whole glider never made it?”  
  
Gray shook his head and had to shove his helmet back up as it slipped down. “Still missing. We’ve taken both bridges but we can only hold for so long. If those paras don’t start coming in soon and reinforce our positions, we could lose ‘em.”  
  
The rumbling of treads on the road grew louder, and closer. “So who’s going to lay the gammons?” Peter asked. “What about the Piats?”  
  
“Parr couldn’t find the gammons in the glider. And we’ve only got one working tank gun. All the other Piats broke.”  
  
Peter uttered an oath that had Gray laughing at him. “You still sound like your mother’s listening, Pevensie.”  
  
“So what are we doing, besides waiting to get run over or shot by a Panzer?”  
  
Gray nodded. “Look there.”  
  
Out of the dark, a pile of equipment trotted over the Bridge.  
  
“Who the hell is buried under all that?”Peter asked. Whoever it was had his own pack, grenade bag, a rifle, bandoleers of ammunition strung across his chest and the Piat anti-tank gun on his shoulder.  
  
“It’s Thornton with our one working gun.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“The Major’s ordered him to shoot the first tank that gets in range.”  
  
“Better not miss,” Peter said. The Piat was rubbish. It jammed, had really limited range, and if you missed, you’d never get a second shot because it was so slow to reload. _Never miss with a Piat. Never, ever miss. Because if you did, it was the last mistake you’d ever make._  
  
“There it is,” Grey whispered.  
  
It was dark, but they could hear it, coming around the corner, not fifty yards from them.  
  
“Fuck,” Gray whispered.  
  
They saw the gun poke out first, and the bulk of the tank followed, huge and deadly serious. The long cannon barrel swiveled about, as if sniffing the air cautiously, like a large carnivore before making its kill. All the Germans knew was that the Bridge had been taken and that hundreds of paras were landing all over the area. They didn’t how many of them were at the Bridge. They didn’t know how weak and vulnerable D Company really was, here in the dark and how few their numbers. They didn’t know that D Company had one gun to fight the armour the hardened veterans of the 21st Panzer could throw at men seeing their first combat tonight.  
  
Peter’s finger itched to pull the trigger.  
  
“Don’t,” Gray said, softly.  
  
“I know.”  
  
Their bullets were useless. Their grenades were useless. Firing now would reveal their positions and their inexperience and bring that tank down on top of them.  
  
The only one who stood a chance was Sergeant Thornton, standing alone, to the side of the road, under a pile of equipment and only the cover of darkness. There was one chance to fire a single bomb at a monster.  
  
The tank slowly began to turn, to come toward them and the Bridge.  
  
“BANG!”  
  
Thornton fired, hitting the tank square in the side.  
  
“Goddamnit, beautiful shot!” Gray crowed.  
  
The tank froze, shuddered, and all hell broke loose. Fireworks, the likes of which Peter had never seen, exploded from within the tank. He and Gray had to duck down into the pit as bullets and shells ignited in the tank and whizzed and ricocheted around, smashing into anything in their way. Brilliant colours of red and orange flew out. The tank was on fire from the inside. Four men leaped out of the top and were shot dead scrambling for their lives.  
  
One man could not escape the tank. Even the screams of the German driver with shot off legs did not drown out the sounds of the other tanks slowly slinking back the way they had come.  
  
ooOOoo  
  
The racket and fireworks from the explosion down at the Bridge went on for over an hour. It was spectacular, as stunning as the tracers going up all over Caen at the planes overhead and paras coming down. Susan had, at first, been sick with worry that something terrible had happened at the Caen Canal Bridge. From their vantage on the roof, though, they could see that the fighting was not spread out but concentrated on just one big, burning thing in the middle of the road.  
  
“A tank, maybe,” she told Madame. “Perhaps it was carrying ammunition that ignited.”  
  
“If it is disabled at the junction, it is going to keep the Germans from moving in that area.”  
  
The explosions and commotion were finally dying down, which seemed to confirm that this was not widespread and ongoing fighting but some single catastrophe that had, temporarily, intimidated the Germans.  
  
“Have you decided what you will do, Jeanne?”  
  
“I am not sure where I would be best deployed,” Susan replied, wrapping her arms about her. “It is difficult to be up here, watching, and not down there. I am worried about Georges and Thérèse. The unit at the Bridge surely knows the Gondrées are friendly but I want to make sure. As much I would like to, I cannot interrupt an ongoing military operation to satisfy my curiosity.”  
  
“Dawn is not that far away. With morning, I think things will be clearer.” Madame Vion patted her arm. “I will need to stay here to care for our patients and any wounded who might be brought in. Given that our roof is the highest point in the area, I am going to have to beat back the Germans come dawn and make sure that they see nothing but our hospital operations. And if the unit at the Bridge thinks we are _not_ a hospital, we will have problems with them, too.”  
  
“I pity the Germans who dare to cross you, Madame,” Susan said. “As for the Allies, they should know better. If they start shooting at us, I’ll get over there and reprimand their CO.”  
  
Madame Vion smiled, rare for her. “Thank you. You may convey to him my thanks and compliments. And if he shoots at a hospital he is neither an officer nor a gentleman.” She turned to return back down the stair. “And Jeanne?”  
  
“Yes, Aunt?”  
  
“Congratulations. If the Allies took the Bridge this night, it was due in no small part to our intelligence work.”  
  
Susan was embarrassed to admit the thought had not occurred to her. “And to you, Madame.”  
  


* * *

  
 **D-Day  
0600-1330**  
  
  
There was no uncertainty at dawn. Anyone who might have slept through the firefight in the night woke to artillery barrages coming from the sea. The ground was shaking beneath their feet. The windows of the hospital rattled and dust and spiders billowed from the rafters. The noise was terrific. Huge shells flew overhead; they were so large it was as if the naval guns were hurtling jeeps and boulders into Calvados.  
  
It was controlled chaos in the hospital. The women were terrified and clutched their crying babies to their breasts, who could not sleep or settle with the racket and debris. What had already been difficult became near impossible. Even before the invasion, there had not been enough of anything to ease anyone; not enough food, water, soap, alcohol, clean linens, or medicine. With food so scarce, they had had to replace the lost calories with wine so that mothers could at least survive and nurse their children. Madame Vion and the staff, however, had become concerned with how the change to more wine seemed to affect the babies.  
  
Five pregnant women, already under stress, began premature labour. People in the community, injured during the night, limped into the hospital with broken bones and bandaged heads, not daring to attempt the trip to a doctor in Caen.  
  
Susan was sure it would only get worse. She did what she could. Care of the frightened and wounded was not something Mrs. Caspian or Jeanne Lambert knew. So it was Susan Pevensie who had survived the London Blitz and Queen Susan the Gentle who moved among the patients, assisting the professional staff, trying to prioritize who needed help the most, and separating the critically ill from those who were frightened and uncomfortable but could endure a long wait. She held hands, wiped brows, handed instruments to the doctor and nurses, rocked the babies, and spoke soft words of reassurance.  
  
It was not what she had trained to do in the SOE, but it reminded her of why the battle raged outside the hospital walls.  
  
In the midst of the misery and need, Lebourgeois and Desvignes returned, gray with exhaustion and tightlipped. Susan went into the garage and helped them remove the bodies from the ambulance. The men had managed to squeeze in six, four British paras and two German soldiers. Together, one by one, they carried the corpses to the cool cellar.  
  
Susan took charge of the dead. She had seen corpses before and these were no less and no more. They could not spare linens to cover the bodies. Susan carefully copied the men’s names from their ID tags and removed their weapons. All of them carried tokens: there were pictures of wives and children, a baby shoe, unsent letters, a pressed flower. She remembered what it had felt like to remain at home while others she loved rode off with her tokens in their armour and bags. She carefully set the items aside, next to the body, and clearly labeled so that these small things of immense weight might someday, some way, find their way back to those who were not forgotten. There would be so very, very many more before the day was over. Surely there would be arrangements for respectful disposition of the dead and return of personal effects.  
  
Once they had washed up, they met in the office and Susan poured the men a strong, fortifying wine and gave them some biscuits received from a Lysander drop.  
  
“The fields are littered with dead paratroopers,” Desvignes said wearily, sinking onto Madame Vion’s couch.  
  
“Dozens, hundreds.” Lebourgeois took a steadying drink of wine. “We did find some alive. They were wandering about in the dark and listening for that damned whistle. They were supposed to rendezvous in Ranville so we directed them there.”  
  
“And what of…”  
  
An explosion rocked the building and shook the walls. They could hear glass shattering and falling to the ground outside. Women screamed.  
  
The three of them bolted up and hurried into the hall. Plaster and dust were raining down. They followed the cries and panicked shouts to the foyer just as another explosion hit. Pictures fell from the walls and shattered.  
  
These weren’t bombs. This was shelling. Someone was targeting the hospital.  
  
Susan pushed her way into the crowded reception area, squeezing by the harried staff trying to cope with panicked patients.  
  
Madame Vion was at the front doors. With arms outstretched, she blocked the hospital entrance with her body, furiously defying three German soldiers trying to push her aside.  
  
ooOOoo  
  
With paras coming in all night, Major Howard was able to pull D Company back from the west side of the Bridge. Peter was ordered to the pillbox with Parr, Grey, Bailey, and Gardner to guard the anti-tank gun.  
  
The roar coming north from the beaches meant the incoming force was landing. The smoke, explosions, and mortars flying overhead were like nothing they’d ever experienced. It was an earthquake that never stopped.  
  
“Glad I’m not one of those poor buggers,” Bailey muttered as the ground shook beneath their feet. The ships were moving closer to shore and raising their barrage inland, right over their heads.  
  
That was all the good news. The bad news was that with dawn, snipers on the west side of the canal had them all pinned down. Moving around was bloody dangerous. There was plenty of cover for snipers– there was a big building just south of the Bridge, a water tower, and heavy tree cover. The snipers could be anywhere and they were very good. The five of them were protected in the pillbox but it was ugly business outside. The snipers had targeted even their doc’s aid station set up in a trench. Snipers had shot at both Lieutenants Wood and Smith who had been wounded and were in the trench with the doc. Their company medical orderly had taken a hit to the chest from sniper fire.  
  
D Company had been pulled back for reserve to hold the area between the River Orne and Caen Canal bridges, but the paras were seeing some pretty hot fighting on the west side, in Bénouville and Le Port. D Company had trained in urban combat, so Peter thought they’d be sent over, assuming they could get across the Bridge without the snipers picking them off. Reinforcements were due to come up from Sword Beach by noon, and they could use them.  
  
Air operations had begun, too. A wing of Spitfires flew overhead and Major Howard had them lay out a signal that _all was well_ and the Bridge under control. Given that none of them could move without possibly taking a bullet to the head from sniper-fire, the Major was probably a little optimistic. It was terrific to see the three Spitfires, with the white bars painted on their wings, fly over the Bridges and do victory rolls.  
  
“Looks like they dropped something,” Peter said, peering out from the pillbox. Major Howard was already ordering a patrol out to see what it was.  
  
Dodging snipers, the chaps came back with bundles that sure weren’t worth the risk. The Spitfire had dropped the day’s early Fleet Street papers. Lot of good it did. There was nothing about the second front, or D Company and everybody started fighting for the _Daily Mirror_ so they could read _Jane._ Well, you didn’t really _read_ Jane. You _looked_ to see what new, ridiculous circumstance would contrive Jane to remove her clothing and reveal a shapely body in nothing but a brassiere, towel, curtain, or bedsheet.  
  
Gray handed him the paper with a grunt of disgust. “You’d think after today Jane would strip to skin just for morale?”  
  
Peter glanced at it – Jane was blonde and had nice legs – and passed it along. “Parr, you want _Jane_?”  
  
“I’m a married man, Pevensie,” Parr replied, not even looking up from the big gun he’d been tinkering with since being assigned to the pillbox. Parr kept poking at it and had made them take the breech out and bring up the mortars from the bunkers below them and he really wouldn’t leave off.  
  
Gardner nudged him in the ribs. “Hey, Pevensie, Gray, what do you make of that?”  
  
He pointed out into the LZ where their glider had crashed. Two little, shabby men were running around in the field, waving shovels and shouting at one another.  
  
Bailey looked up over the _Daily Mirror_. “Thornton and Fox caught them this morning. They’re Italian, from the Todt. They wouldn’t leave, said they _had_ to be here. So, the Major gave them a biscuit and let them go, figured they were harmless.”  
  
“What are they doing out there?” Gardner asked.  
  
One of them picked up one of the big poles that was on the ground and was teetering around with it, nearly taking out the other when he swung it around.  
  
“Impossible,” Gray said. “They aren’t? Are they?”  
  
“Sure looks like,” Gardner said.  
  
“I don’t believe it,” Peter added.  
  
They watched, beyond shocked, as the poor man tried to plant his unwieldy pole into a hole in the ground. His co-worker ran forward and frantically shoveled dirt around the pole to keep it steady.  
  
“Guess we won’t be taking off in the gliders from here, right?” Bailey said.  
  
They all started laughing. The morning of the second front, over 100,000 men coming ashore, thousands of planes overhead, three crashed and broken gliders at the foot of the Caen Canal Bridge, and two Italians were trying to plant the dreaded glider poles.  
  
“So where’s the trigger?” Parr asked, breaking up the laughter. “We got it loaded. I’ve got the gun pointed at where those ruddy snipers are hiding. How do we fire it?”  
  
There wasn’t much room in the pillbox and there were only so many levers and buttons that could be the trigger on a 75 mm anti-tank gun.  
  
“What's this?” Gardner asked.  
  
“What’s what?”  
  
“This.”  
  
In a night and day of the biggest explosions imaginable, this one near burst Peter’s ears. A shell screamed out of the cannon in the direction of Caen.  
  
The gun shuddered and belched a huge case out the back that sent them all scrambling to be clear of it.  
  
They were all silent for a moment and Peter couldn’t have heard anyone anyway for the ringing in his ears.  
  
Parr grabbed the gun and spun it around, south. “We’ll get those square-headed bastards now.”  
  
“You’re a bloody lunatic, Parr,” Bailey said.  
  
“The snipers are on the roof of that big building down there. They’re not going to get any more Tommys today. Let’s see if we can’t bag us some Nazi sniper bucketheads.”  
  
This time, Peter put his fingers in his ears when the gun went off and stayed clear of the heavy casing that spit out the back. It’d break bones if it hit you.  
  
The next mortar sailed south, straight and right into the uppermost floor of the big fancy Château down the canal. They all whooped it up – it felt great to shoot something big at people who were trying to kill them. Parr was grinning like a maniac.  
  
The next was a brilliant, beautiful shot. The accuracy on the gun was incredible, nothing like the Piat.  
  
Major Howard suddenly stuck his head into the pillbox bellowing loud enough to rival the gun. “For Christ’s sake, what in blazes are you doing?! Parr!? Are you shooting at a _maternity hospital_?!”

 

ooOOoo  
  
“Madame Vion, we must go to the roof. It is the tallest…”  
  
“You may not, Lieutenant Hoeller. This is a hospital. A women’s hospital with newborns. You cannot. I won’t permit it.”  
  
Susan had seen Lieutenant Hoeller at the checkpoints. His French was passable. He was with one of the Panzer Grenadier Regiments quartered in Bénouville. She took her place by Madame Vion. Lieutenant Becker was with him, probably for the language support, and a Sergeant she did not know. Becker kept trying to catch her eye. Susan ignored him. The Sergeant and Becker were both carrying rifles with sniper sights and Susan felt her anger cool to hardness.  
  
“Madame Vion, please, this is very dangerous,” Lieutenant Becker said. “We must survey the area. Our communications have been sabotaged and…”  
  
“Your defence is not my concern,” Madame Vion countered.  
  
“This is the tallest…” Hoeller repeated and Madame cut him off.  
  
“Climb the water tower up the road! You can see from there!”  
  
With a jerk of Hoeller’s head, the Sergeant stepped forward and firmly pushed Madame Vion out of the way. Becker and Hoeller sprinted for the marbled staircase.  
  
“This is outrageous!” Madame Vion spat, and ran after them. Susan followed.  
  
By the time they made it to the roof, Becker and Hoeller were already there, with binoculars, speaking rapidly in German and pointing north in the direction of Bénouville and Le Port.  
  
Madame Vion pushed right by the Sergeant who tried feebly to block her way through the door onto the roof. “Lieutenant! What is it!? Tell me!”  
  
“We cannot get into Bénouville,” Hoeller began.  
  
“The resistance in the streets is too great,” Becker put in more fluently. “We have snipers, but we must get some high ground, set up our batteries…”  
  
“Here?!” Madame Vion shrieked. “You will not. I forbid it.”  
  
“But Madame…”  
  
Madame Vion’s furious rebuke died in the making as another shell hurtled into the side of the Château. They all staggered and even so far up and away they could hear from below the women screaming and the piercing wail of infants. Susan grabbed onto Madame’s arm, keeping them both upright.  
  
Madame shook herself off and marched up to Hoeller and Becker. She had to shove her helmet out of her eyes to stare up at them.  
  
“Get off my roof or I’ll push you off. You are endangering my patients and their babies, many of whom, I’ll remind you, are _your_ babies.” She poked Becker in the chest with her finger.  
  
They all flinched as a single shot rang out from somewhere close, followed by the pinging ricochet of the bullet off the Bridge.  
  
“The Allies are shelling us because you are here!” Madame Vion cried. “This is your fault. They think we are shielding snipers! And if you put a battery here, they will level us.” She took a step forward and both men took an alarmed step back. “I will not evacuate my hospital, my patients, and your babies for a war your Führer forced on us.”  
  
Another shell smashing into the corner of the Château decided the matter. The force of it shook them all. She and Madame Vion both fell to their knees, Becker nearly pitched over the edge and the returning sniper fire intensified.  
  
The stalwart Sergeant helped Madame Vion off the roof and Susan found that somehow Becker had managed to both recover his footing and take her arm.  
  
Hoeller rushed back down the flights of stairs, protected by the Sergeant and berated by Madame Vion the whole way. He surely could not understand more than a word in four of Madame’s furious French. Susan tried to hurry after her but now Becker had her arm and at the landing pulled her to a stop.  
  
“A moment, Mademoiselle.”  
  
It did not matter the time, the place, or the language. Susan recognized the situation immediately and felt impatience that this time she was not going to graciously hide.  
  
“Only a moment, Lieutenant.”  
  
He was an attractive young man. So earnest, very well-meaning, certainly not naïve, and wholly committed to the wrong cause.  
  
“Mademoiselle Lambert, Jeanne, please, would you accept our protection? Might you use your influence to convince Madame to do so? I worry that you might be injured.”  
  
How many times had she heard this before? His touch to her arm was gentle, not overbearing at all. It was still most unwelcome. Susan stared at his offending hand on her arm and, with a disapproving quirk of her brow and imperious frown, he quickly removed it.  
  
She straightened. “Thank you, but no, Lieutenant. We will take care of ourselves. We only need protection because your Führer chose to destroy Europe with his insane notions of Aryan purity. The sooner you are gone, the safer we will be.”  
  
Hoeller was calling for Becker and Susan turned and marched down the stairs. He was not the first young man whose unfounded hopes she had dashed and she felt no guilt over it.  
  
Becker followed, looking crestfallen. At the bottom of the stair, he tipped his helmet. “Good bye, Mademoiselle. God keep you safe.”  
  
“I hope that the Allies treat you honourably, Lieutenant.”  
  
Madame Vion was holding the front door open and the Germans waded through the foyer of crying babies, terrified mothers, and bandaged old men.  
  
 _This misery you have wrought. Aslan save us all from the intelligent, well-meaning men of the enemy._  
  
An armoured car was waiting for them in the drive. The Germans all looked up as a wing of Spitfires roared overhead coming in from the beaches and they could all hear, but not see, strafing in the direction of Caen.  
  
Madame stood in the doorway, putting her body between them and the hospital, just in case they changed their minds. They did not. The two Lieutenants got into the car, the Sergeant took the driver’s seat, and they roared off.  
  
They both sighed in relief. The moment of peace was shattered with another shot from a sniper’s rifle. The sound bounced between the walls of the Château and the trees.  
  
Madame Vion turned on her heels and grabbed Susan’s arms. “There must be a sniper here, in the hospital. It’s why they started shelling us. He might have snuck in during all the chaos of this morning.”  
  
“One of the upper floors, one of the wings we aren’t using?”  
  
“Yes, on the north side facing the Bridge, the east wing. They seemed to have stopped shelling us, I pray to God they have. But Jeanne, you must find him. If the Allies think we are shooting at them we can expect them to shoot back.”  
  
She nodded. “I know. I will find him.”  
  
“Do what you must. Then go to the Bridge. Tell them our situation.”  
  
Madame clasped her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “You are a brave girl. Go!”  
  
Susan ran to her room, pulled out the drawer in the bottom of her dresser and removed its false bottom. She quickly strapped on her knives, put the knuckle duster and garrote wire in her pocket. She didn’t think she would need them, but who knew?  
  
She ducked under her bed and carefully slid her Little Joe Crossbow out from among the slats. She left the hollowed out quarrels – she wouldn’t be loading any explosives in these. A fleeting regret – she wished she had her old quiver, gifted by Father Christmas.  
  
More explosions and the windows rattled again but these were more distant. Perhaps a bombing run or a Panzer column being strafed by Allied fighters. Surely that was part of the plan. The Allies would harry and attack the tank columns by day and keep them from reaching the beaches so that the landing forces could disembark and bring their own heavy equipment ashore.  
  
Susan put the speculation aside. The landing was not her concern. Now she fully understood what Colonel Walker-Smythe had done, and Major al-Masri, and Tebbitt. They had known all along the invasion was coming here. They had all misled her. She understood, bitter though it was. She felt some grudging admiration. They all respected her, Tebbitt loved her, and still they had been the loyal spies, surely an oxymoron, and lied to her.  
  
She was shoving the hard quarrels into a shoulder bag when the burden of the task hit her.  
  
Killing a dumb deer in a pen in Inverness-shire could not begin to prepare someone for this. Susan sat down on her bed, closed her eyes, and tried to shut out the sounds of the crying babies and gunfire and the feel of plaster and dust swirling everywhere.  
  
She hated death yet had been steeped in it: the families killed in the Blitz; the brothers, fathers, and sons who would never return home from Italy, Singapore, Libya, or Dunkirk; the thousands who would surely die today. To protect the Bridges and the men guarding them, to protect the Allied advance to liberate and secure France and then the rest of Europe, to protect the women and children caught in the literal crossfire, she must be prepared to kill.  
  
 _Aslan? Aslan? Forgive me. I may send brothers to you today. Greet them for me? Comfort their loved ones who will not see them again?_  
  
The Lion did not speak to her, not directly. She was not Lucy and it was hard to hear him in a moment like this. But she felt a breeze stir her hair and delicious fragrance very far from the odours of fire, blood, antiseptic, and sour wine.  
  
 _Thank you._  
  
She was wild with longing: for Peter who knew what it was to kill cleanly and magnificently, certain of his righteous cause; for Edmund who understood just and unjust death and spoke the words of forgiveness in both cases; and for fearless Lucy who loved and cried with her after.  
  
Susan did not fear her death today. She loathed the death war made it necessary for her to dispense. Which of her selves must she call upon? Susan Pevensie who had survived bombs raining down upon London? Queen Susan the Gentle, the greatest bowman in Narnian history who ran with the wolves and had killed, at need, to save herself, her loved ones, her country? Mrs. Caspian, who had bludgeoned a murderer with a pot and would have finished the job with a letter opener? Jeanne Lambert, who was rat and wolf? Today, this moment, she was all of these, the culmination of all her selves.  
  
Father Christmas had been so very, very wrong. Battles were not made any more ugly when women fought in them. Were not the women’s hospital, all of England, and all of France the proof that war was a woman’s business, as much as a man’s? Women fought as surely as the men, for all that they might do it differently. All battles were ugly, no matter who fought in them, for they all died the same way.  
  
Slinging bag and bow over her shoulder, she was going a-hunting.  
  
Susan avoided the crowded foyer and went to one of the back ways that they had used for hiding the Allied fliers, men avoiding conscription, and the weapons. Dust choked the area, broken mirrors dangled from cracked walls. Susan climbed the staircase, picking her way through the debris, listening closely, moving as her Wolf-Guard had taught her, silent and alert. A sniper would be in the northern part of the building, with the best views of the Bridge.  
  
The shelling had stopped, so that made it feel safer and easier to listen. The hospital noise disappeared entirely. In between the thunderous artillery barrages from the beaches there was the occasional crack of a German sniper rifle.  
  
She loaded a quarrel, cocked the bow, brought it up, and carefully climbed the last flight.  
  
At a landing on the upper most floor, she paused, turning her head this way and that, wishing for the pinpoint hearing of a Wolf or an Owl, or the scenting of a Hound who could tell her if someone was near.  
  
Down one hallway, she could see, through a haze of smoke, a gaping hole in the wall and rubble. It was possible the shelling had taken out the sniper, if he had even been here. It was a predator’s instinct, but Susan didn’t think that had happened. He was here and was still here. She waited, listening so hard she could sense the dust settling.  
  
There was another rifle shot. The noise reverberated _inside_ the hall, stirred the air, and echoed on cracked black and white marble. Location revealed, Susan stalked her quarry, as surely as she had targeted the deer in the pen, and hunted with the Wolves of Narnia. She heard noises she knew well, a body shifting and a small cough, a gun scraping on wood, a casing rolling on tile, fingers manipulating bullets, and the mechanical snaps of a rifle being loaded.  
  
A room facing north and the Canal was just ahead, its door ajar. Susan crept forward, eased to the doorway, hefted her crossbow, and waited until it sounded as if the sniper was settling again at his post, his attention not here, but on the Bridge and her countrymen.  
  
As she slipped into the room, the door creaked, ever so slightly. Her mind registered the back of a German uniform and the butt of a German rifle. The man started, spun about, trying to bring his rifle to bear. Her training held, first in Narnia, then honed to a finer edge in the SOE. She reacted, without thought or hesitation, before the gun was even clear of the window. Susan fired, felt the surge as the quarrel left the bow and knew her shot was true, straight through his vulnerable neck.  
  
His body snapped with the force of the quarrel’s blow and the momentum pitched him backwards, out the window. He didn’t even cry out but she heard the hard crack of a helmet hitting the ground and the clatter of the rifle. Susan ran to the window, reloading as she went, though her hit was surely fatal. She looked down.  
  
Feldwebel Müller, the kindly checkpoint Sergeant who had shown her pictures of his wife and three children, who had slipped sausage and batteries into her wooden box, would not see his family again.  
  
She pulled away from the window, shaking and heart sick.  
  
 _Thank you, Aslan. Thank you for making this so terrible._  
  
Susan never wanted death to be easy. Killing the bad, the evil, and the cruel could be justified and excused. Killing the good man doing his duty to your enemy was something Susan wished never to become accustomed to.  
  
She stepped back into the hall. The wolf patrolled the corridor, checking all the empty, dusty rooms on the floor, but it was all empty. Satisfied, she ran back down the stairs and out the back door of the Château. The wolf would now hunt a sniper in the water tower.  
  
ooOOoo  
  
In the pillbox, they all hunched and winced at the sound. “For God’s sake, I wish they’d shut up those Moaning Minnies,” Gardner muttered.  
  
The Minnies were a rocket launcher attached to the front of the German light armour that had mobilized in Bénouville and Le Port west of the Canal Bridge. The things made the most god-awful racket and were deadly accurate. The mortars were making life hell for D Company at the Bridge and the paras battling house by house in Le Port.  
  
They were all feeling the pressure. If relief didn’t come up from the beaches soon, it would be too late.  
  
“Parr’s right,” Gray said, staring up at the water tower. “There’s someone up there and he’s spotting for the Minnies.”  
  
“That maniac just wants to shoot the gun again,” Bailey griped. “I never did get a cuppa, thanks to him.”  
  
Peter looked out from the pillbox and he was sure he could see someone climbing the water tower. “They might be on the Château roof, too. Or maybe after we shelled it, they moved to the water tower.”  
  
There was another rifle shot and Parr came running across the road and darted into the pillbox.  
  
“Major says we can try the water tower.”  
  
Bailey was right, though. Parr looked like a fiend an especially gleeful fiend.  
  
“Now, we’re going to do this proper, hear me, chaps?”  
  
“Sure thing, boss,” Peter said. Who was he to get between a madman and his 75 mm anti-tank gun?  
  
“NUMBER ONE GUN!” Parr roared so loudly in his broad Cockney accent he was nearly as deafening as the gun itself. “LOAD ONE ROUND.”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Bailey opened the breech and they loaded the shell in with mutters of “Yes, sir, right away, sir.”  
  
“NUMBER ONE GUN, LEFT 5 DEGREES!”  
  
Gray got that job. He swiveled the telescopic sight and aimed the gun, dead to center, on the water tower. “Yep, you can see ‘em. There are at least two up there. One’s on the tower and there’s another one climbing the ladder on the far side.”  
  
“NUMBER ONE GUN, PREPARE TO FIRE!”  
  
They all moved out of the way so that Parr could do the honours. There was a curious, quiet lull. It seemed that even the shelling and street fighting had stopped to observe the bloody lunatic of a London Cockney shoot the NUMBER ONE GUN. Peter was sure everyone could hear Parr’s booming voice from the River Orne Bridge all the way to Le Port.  
  
Peter clapped his hands over his ears.  
  
“NUMBER ONE GUN, FIRE!”  
  
Parr pushed the button. The gun roared and the shell hurtled off. It hit the water tower straight on, beautiful shot.  
  
They all hollered and cheered. Men on both sides of the Canal threw their helmets into the air, then scrambled to get them back on because of the snipers.  
  
“What the fuck?” Gray said. “It didn’t blow?”  
  
“The water tower is just leaking. It didn’t explode.”  
  
The shell had gone in one side of the water tower and out the other. Peter supposed the sniper might be drowned or forced off by the water spouting out the sides.  
  
Parr swore under his breath. “It might be the shell. It’s armour-piercing.” He shrugged. “Nothing for it. Let’s do another.”  
  
“NUMBER ONE GUN! LOAD ONE ROUND.”  
  
Parr shot hole after hole through the thing and all he did was drain water from the tank. And maybe wash the snipers off the tower in a cascade.  
  
The whole bridge was shaking with the pounding of the anti-tank gun. The snipers kept it up so Parr started aiming at the trees on the west bank, figuring the gunmen might be hiding there.  
  
Between the roaring of both Parr and the NUMBER ONE GUN, Peter didn’t think he’d ever hear normally again.  
  
In a pause, they heard Major Howard yell out from his command post in the trench, “'For Christ's sake, Parr, will you shut up! I can’t think! Keep that bloody gun quiet!”  
  
“But sir!” Parr yelled back. “They’re snipers in the…”  
  
“Only fire when necessary, and that doesn't mean at imaginary snipers. Keep quiet!”  
  
Parr was visibly deflated. “Nobody told me it was going to be a quiet war.”  
  
It wasn’t a quiet war, but it was quieter, broken by the sounds of the fighting on the west side, the fighting going on at the River Orne Bridge, and the crack of sniper shots. Peter wondered if maybe they should try again with a cup of tea. A lot of the men were sagging under the fatigue. He knew from long Narnian campaigns that he still had plenty in reserve. He’d been saving the ration chocolate and biscuits, which were disgusting but would keep him going.  
  
Gray, who had been dozing, standing up, stirred and cocked his head. “What’s that noise?”  
  
Peter listened. With all the ringing in his ears, it was hard to hear anything but this was…  
  
“Does Jerry play bagpipes?” Bailey asked, looking out of the pillbox, shielding his eyes, and looking west across the Bridge.  
  
“I don’t think so,” Peter replied.  
  
“Bagpipes? What are you talking about? You must be bloody nuts.”  
  
Except that Bailey was right. It _was_ bagpipes, coming from the west. They piled out of the pillbox and tore across the Bridge toward the sound, and even the snipers were too shocked to put up much resistance.  
  
A bagpiper, in a kilt, marched along the tow path, playing _Blue Bonnets Over the Border._ A bugler stood up from a trench along the Bridge and sounded a call.  
  
Behind the madman piper marched a tall man, the commander, in green beret and a white sweater, carrying a walking stick. Behind him, a long column of commandos, all marching smartly. And in case anyone might think they were merely on a brisk exercise in Scotland, behind the soldiers was a Sherman tank.  
  
At 1330, contact had been made between the invasion force at the beaches and the paras of the 6th and D Company at the Bridges. Their relief had arrived – Lord Lovat, his green berets of the 1st Special Service Brigade, bagpiper, tank, and a draft horse pulling a cart with the men’s gear. The effect seemed oddly Narnian, in a way, though Peter had never seen or heard bagpipes in battle before.  
  
It all became even more oddly Narnian when a man hurried from the Gondrée Café with a tray, glasses and a bottle of champagne.  
  
It was too much for Parr.  
  
“Blimey, I could use some of that!” Parr ran up to the man, who must be Monsieur Gondrée, and shouted, “Oui! Oui!”  
  
Peter was very glad to see Monsieur Gondrée alive – he’d wondered if Lieutenant Smith had killed the man by mistake last night.  
  
A woman burst out of the Café. She was covered in sooty black all over her face, arms, and clothes. Her state was explained when she threw her arms around Parr before he could even get his glass. Madame Gondrée was expressing her joy at being the first home liberated in France by kissing all of the Allied soldiers. Since they were all still wearing their camouflage paint from the night before, the black soot was rubbing off on her.  
  
With the champagne corks popping, Peter decided he should take a glass, too.  
  
He had to shift the Sten from one side to another and push his helmet out of his eyes. He got a very nice hug and a kiss from Madame Gondrée; tears were leaving muddy trails down her face.  
  
She was babbling in French and Monsieur Gondrée was thanking him in English.  
  
He was just reaching for his glass when a voice shrieked, “Where is that lunatic with the gun! I’m going to kill him!”  
  
 _Wait._ Peter _knew_ that very harsh, very angry, and very feminine tone. It had been directed at him before. He spun around.  
  
“SUSAN?!”  
  
“PETER!”  
  
His sister ran to him and threw her arms around him. Everything got fouled in his gun and grenade pouch and smock, both their helmets, and her … crossbow?  
  
Peter picked Susan up and hugged her. She was so thin, so light. And sopping wet.  
  
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered.  
  
“I don’t either. Praise the Lion.”  
  
“Were you the Rat who signed the reports? I saw the drawings. I didn’t dare even hope, but…”  
  
She nodded against his neck. “I wrote them. Some of them. I wondered, when I saw the gliders last night… I can’t believe it.”  
  
Susan choked on a dry sob.  
  
He set her down. “I’m getting black camo all over you. Why are you wet?”  
  
She regained her feet and said something over his shoulder to the Gondrées in French.  
  
Monsieur Gondrée replied and Madame Gondrée said something, gesturing to her blackened clothing and the three of them laughed.  
  
Then his sister turned back to him with a look that made a man who had pranged from a glider, been shot by soldiers, tanks, and rocket launchers, and taken and held a bridge for the last 13 hours in enemy territory shake in his boots.  
  
“Where. Is. The. Lunatic. With. The. Gun?”  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Parr slowly edge away, glass in hand.  
  
“Were you under the water tower?” Peter asked, wanting to divert his wrathful, vengeful sister.  
  
“I was _climbing_ the water tower to take out the sniper and then someone tried to kill me!” She lapsed into irate French, shrugged the crossbow off her shoulder and brought it to bear, pointing it in the direction of the retreating soldiers.  
  
“It was one of you, wasn’t it?”  
  
Monsieur Gondrée stepped forward with glasses of champagne on his tray. “Will you drink? To celebrate? “ He blew some dirt off the tray. “I have had this champagne buried in the garden since the Nazis arrived!”  
  
His sister softened to a smile and she nodded. “Merci beaucoup.”  
  
“Thank you, Monsieur,” Peter said.  
  
They both took a glass from the tray.  
  
Susan bit her lip and moved closer, putting her head at his shoulder.  
  
“I killed today, Peter. I killed two good men.”  
  
“I killed today, too, Susan. And someone I loved very well died last night during the fighting."  
  
So many men and women had already died. Den Brotheridge had been the first tonight and many more would die before France and the rest of Europe was free. He and Susan had done this before. They had fought, won, lost, mourned the dead, comforted those who remained, and drank the parting cup. As surely as they had been summoned to Narnia, now they were called to do the same here.  
  
There was a comforting familiarity to the old Narnian ritual Susan began as she solemnly raised her glass and her eyes to his, and said, “To our dead who are home.”  
  
Peter spoke the response. "Until we meet again in Aslan's Own Country."  
  
“Do not let our grief keep you from your journey home,” Susan replied, concluding the rite.  
  
But Peter did not drink. “And now to our other home, my sister. V is for Victory. Cheers!”  
  
Susan raised her glass. “Santé, my brother. V is for victory.”  
  
The moment was very sweet. The champagne, thankfully, was not.

 

\--End—

Rthstewart April 2012

 

* * *

 

Links to the research are in my Live Journal.  My full research  notes on this story, right down to a dramatization of Lord Lovat, his commandos, and Piper Billy Millin arriving at what would be called Pegasus Bridge are  [here](http://rthstewart.livejournal.com/70277.html#cutid1). 

Peter’s story relies heavily upon Stephen Ambrose’s _Pegasus Bridge:  June 6, 1944_ and Will Fowler’s _Pegasus Bridge_.  The intelligence operation that supported Operation Deadstick is also described in these sources.  Not surprisingly, I’ve engaged in more speculation in Susan’s story.  The general information about Susan’s story comes from several sources documenting the exploits of the women the SOE inserted into occupied countries.  Sources include Rita Kramer’s _Flames in the Field_ and Marcus Binney’s _The Women Who Lived For Danger_.  While the Allies had excelleent intelligence regarding the Caen bridges in the run up to D-Day, I do not know if any British agents were actually inserted into the network to support the surveillance Madame Leah Vion and the Gondrées conducted. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Susan And Peggy Go Shooting (Again)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2404067) by [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart)




End file.
